Customer Reviews

National Geographic Essential Visual History of World Mythology

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

 

 

For those who love ancient history, this is the book for them! At night before I go to sleep, I love reading this book with its wide verity of different myths and cultures. There are introduction pages for each category, and each god or goddess has two whole pages dedicated to their divine life, abilities, plus their relationship with either creatures on Earth, or with each other. Short stories or explanation pages help the reader to better understand the myth category they are reading. This book also includes around when that curtain culture started believing in the myth, or how it changed, but still practiced in the present time. Its also fun to read because it takes the reader places that still stand today, and truly shows how some of these landmarks passed the test of time. The pictures in this book are colorful and help imagine what the culture would of looked like if its places were still bran new. From paintings to sculpture, and pictures of old artifacts found around the time of that era, it really gives the reader a almost a tangible feeling as though in their minds eye, they could connect with history in that time itself. The different myths in this book are: Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, American, African, Australian, and Oceanic Mythology. As one could see, this book is worth having in a personal library! There is just so much verity. This book is valuable to have! And its a great price!

This is a great book with a ton of information on it, but it's small. It measures 5 inches wide, 6 1/2 inches tall and 1 1/2 inches thick. It's not that it's bad for it to be that small, I just didn't pay enough attention to the description when I bought it, so I was expecting it to be bigger. I'm really into mythology, though, and have found it to be very entertaining and useful. Worth the buy.

The copy I have is a small hardcover maybe a little larger and thicker than the average paperback. Amazon (or the publishing company) really needs to add one of those 'look inside' for this since the selling point is all the full color pictures (thus the visual history title.) Nicely categorized, around two pages per entry with multiple pictures per entry but still managing to put down the main story points. Fun read.

My 10-year old used this book a lot for his ancient Egypt report. Good size, good color photos. He read other sections as well. Unfortunately, we purchased it because he lost the public library's copy. :(