Customer Reviews

Ancient World (World History (Usborne))

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If you want to interest a young person in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome given her this book. The information is presented in full color pictures with captions. The detail is amazing. Want to know how the ancient Egyptian lived? The cut away view of the house complete with gardens and people going about their daily activies is fascinating enough. Add to this the concise explanations of the various rooms and activities that avoids being wordy, and you have a winner. There is enough accurate information in this book for a junior high student to write an in depth report on an ancient civilization. The presentation is engaging enough that adults will find themselves reading it, too. The different levels of the Greek afterlife, the education of girls in Sparta, how the Roman aquaducts worked - it is all here.

This book is an extremely valuable resource for teaching children about the ancient world. The research has given detailed information written at a level of understanding that holds interest whether the child is able to read on his or her own, or an adult reads to the child. The pictures are exceptional having marvelous color and detail.

The best part in the book is where the activity of the first farmers living in the area situated in the basins of the Euphrates,Tigris and the adjacent regions is discribed.The author describes several civilizations(the Chinese,the Roman etc.),nevertheless states that the cradle of the civilization of all humans is the area Breasted named in 1970s 'the Fertile Crescent'.This and other archaeological jargon might be avoided and the idea might be rendered in simpler terms.The first pages are lavishly illustrated with very pleasent and informative paintings for which thanks are due to the illustrators.I as a reader would prefer if a scene,say,of farming were depicted on the frontpage instead of the gloomy and sad lamenting women and a dead man in a sarcophagus.Again in the book itself there is talk about skulls that 'probably'were displayed in the rooms of the living persons in the IV millenium BCE,that when somebody died in what is now called Chatal Huyuk,the bodies were left to rot.The beautiful painting of the temple in Ur is accompanied with a commentary that the ziggurat is a platform of that building,while it is the high building itself,the word being actively used by modern Kartuels in everyday speach.Tsikhura is the correct word and tsikhe is a synonym.Talk about Linear A and linear B inscriptions might be ommited as difficult to grasp for public.Such books are necessary as an introductory material before a person reads huge books of,say,Samuel Kramer.The author desired to tell that various ancient civilizations have common roots.If that were the truth we would not witness wars raging even in the XX-XXIcc.Talk on the Exodus and the Hollocost of the Jews might be avoided mention in the book like this.Part on the gods and pyramids in the Nile valley are also more appropreate for a middle aged wise reader than for a teenager.The ancient history of the area Kardu(from the Zagros mountains in what is now Iran to the Nile basin- would be enough for one book,the rest might be published in another volume,as too many dates,personal and place names in such books make them difficult to grasp.The paintings of the houses and farms in Ur are brilliant.

man was that a good book. pictures, writing. best non-fiction ever. better than the THE TORONTO STORY.

man was that a good book. pictures, writing. best non-fiction ever. better than the THE TORONTO STORY.