I've written a very simple router abstraction on top of History.js, called StateRouter.js. It's in very early stages of development, but I am using it as the routing solution in a single-page application I'm writing. Like you, I found History.js very hard to grasp, especially as I'm quite new to JavaScript, until I understood that you really need (or should have) a routing abstraction on top of it, as it solves a low-level problem.
This simple example code should demonstrate how it's used:
var router = new staterouter.Router();
// Configure routes
router
.route('/', getHome)
.route('/persons', getPersons)
.route('/persons/:id', getPerson);
// Perform routing of the current state
router.perform();
Here's a little fiddle I've concocted in order to demonstrate its usage.