Customer Reviews

A History of World Societies, Vol. 1: To 1715

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a high school history teacher, I have found this book to be an excellent resource for lecture notes. It includes specific and detailed information to illustrate significant historical periods and events that I have not found anywhere else. For example, the section on the Renaissance contains facinating detail on the role of women and Africans in Europe at that time. I have also loaned this book to students because the authors clearly outline the "so what" of historical events.

I was interested in a previous post that questioned the ability of a runner to cover "50 leagues or 175 miles per day," and discovered that an Ancient Roman league is equivalent to 2.22 km; therefore, 50 leagues would approximate 111 km or 68.93 miles - presumably a distance entirely possible for a top athlete of the day. Fascinating, huh?

This book is an excellent resource for students.

I had to buy this extremely overpriced book for my world civilizations class. It is a horrible text book, it's impossible to follow for someone who isn't already well versed on world history because it jumps around to a ridiculous extent. One page it will discuss one county in 1780, the next page its talking about another country 200 years later, and the following page its somewhere else, all without any indication to the reader that it is changing topics. The "key words" are in bold, but there is no concrete definition following it, the definition is spread out over many pages, making it extremely difficult to know what is truly important about the topic and what to memorize. Maybe this text book is the perfect thing for a history teacher who wants to buff up their knowledge, but as a student who's background is not world history, opening up this book leads to a mass of frustration, and I can only imagine there are many students who feel the same.

Also, if you're going to put keywords into a book, generally a glossary would also help.

Upon receiving this text, I was flipping through the pages and impressed with the layout and accessibility of the book. However, reading it has proven to be a nightmare. There are so many factual errors that I'm afraid that the things I may be learning other things incorrectly. Yet this seems to be a common problem in history books. And, like the history books I had throughout high school, this book has some kind of agenda. It seems like every people group that American society tends to view as having "morality" deficiencies, this book works hard to defend. It is a little bizarre to behold at times.

I wish that, just once, I could find a history book that is only a little biased (since nothing can be unbiased - people have views, and no matter how hard they try, they will reflect in their writing), but instead I just get textbook after textbook that will go as far as making incorrect conjectures just to get a certain point across. That isn't right.

So I must give this book a mediocre score because it is the epitome of mediocrity. Just what we love to find in textbooks!

This book is not even worth a penny. Even wikipedia is better than this book. My school uses this book and guess what. It sucks. The author obviously have no clue about what he is talking about. He skips from ancient egypt to Pharoah and not in chronological order. WTF don't waste ur money. go online if u want this freakin book.
PISSED OFF....

The book came in good cond.and on time!... Do business anytime..referred them to other classmates