The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child; Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor [Paperback]

Susan Wise Bauer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2001

What terrible secret was buried in Shi Huangdi's tomb? Did nomads like lizard stew? How did a six year-old become the last emperor of Rome? The Story of the World covers the sweep of human history from ancient times until the present. This read-aloud series is designed for parents to share with elementary-school children.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This may well be the best multiage read aloud narrative of world history yet to have been written. " -- Homeschooling in Japan, January 2002

This is a basic history resource from which you can build a complete study for the early grades. -- Cathy Duffy, author of Christian Home Educator's Manual: Elementary Grades and co-author of Beyond Survival: A Guide to Abundant-Life Homeschooling

This works wonderfully as a family read-aloud... There's plenty of dialogue and enough detail to keep adults interested. -- Cafi Cohen, author of Homeschooling The Teen Years

About the Author

Susan Wise Bauer is a novelist and educator. With her mother, Jessie Wise, she co-authored The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (Norton, 1999), a book which has rapidly become an educational standard. Susan teaches at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. She was home educated herself; she and her husband now teach their four children at home as well.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Peace Hill Press; First Edition edition (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971412901
• ISBN-13: 978-0971412903
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #417,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

412 of 437 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathing New Life into Ancient History, April 1, 2002

By 

L. Joyce (FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child; Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (Paperback)

As a history major, I have always prided myself on the fact that I could find fascinating a subject that left many bored. However, when we began my daughter's first grade history lessons using the "Usbourne Book of World History" (using the lesson plan laid out in the excellent "Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise), even I found the material a bit dry; it is, after all, an encyclopedia. Apparently, Susan Wise Bauer felt similarly about its limitations, as she went out and wrote her own history tome. "The Story of the World" is so fantastic, it takes my breath away! The read aloud text on ancient times presents history in small chunks, and is written in an engaging, story-like manner that delights my children, who are 4 and 6 years old. This delightful manner in no way means that the subject matter is "watered down"; Bauer still introduces children to the facts and terminology that are relevant to the subject. For instance, the chapter on "The First Writing" explains the origins and meanings of "hierolglyphics", "Mesopatamia", "cuneiform", and "papyrus".
After listening in rapt pleasure to the text, children will delve into the accompanying curriculum guide and activity book. The guide provides thought provoking questions on the text, and offers an example of the type narration that the child should give (the child is expected to briefly narrate back to the parent what they just read about in the text). The guide book provides map work, coloring pages, puzzles, and review cards which can be copied from the book for use, and also includes wonderful craft ideas (most of which, as an inherently lazy person, I found very "do-able" without undue effort). This week, we carved a cuneiform monogram into clay, made a hieroglyphic scroll on paper, and left them outside to see which will prove to be more durable over time; this will illustrate to the children why the papyrus documents of Egypt did not survive the centuries, but the older cuneiform tablets of Sumer did. For our next project, we plan on mummifying a chicken from the grocery store using the directions from the guide.
I love this history program, and history is now my daughter's favorite subject. I can't wait for Ms. Bauer to write the next volume (this volume covers earliest nomads to the fall of the Roman Empire). The only downside is that the cirriculum guide comes as a thick packet of pages, rather than being bound into a book. However, the pages have pre-cut holes and are easily stored a binder, and this makes it very easy to copy pages from the guide. ... I feel that this course would be a bargain at twice the price.

1,113 of 1,202 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, but little distinction between legends and history, May 7, 2003

By 

Robert Griffin (St Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child; Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (Paperback)

We used this book for 1st grade history this year. As we approach the end of the school year, I find I have mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand, it definitely has kid appeal. It *is* a book of stories, and employs a conversational style. My daughter always enjoyed it. There is some non-Western history (India, China, and to a chapter each on ancient Africa and the Americas), which is important for a more well-rounded study of the period. And perhaps, the biggest factor in its favor, there aren't many books out there like it, yet. I was a classics major in college, and have studied this period, its languages, literature, history and culture in moderate detail. I have often found myself correcting the book or pointing out what is established fact and what is simply a story. This has resulted in a lot of interesting discussions, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with my daughter reading this book independently, as it would easily engender a fragmentary understanding at best or foster strange misconceptions at worst.

Despite my background, please don't think that I expect more from this book (or my student!) than is reasonable. This is after all, first grade, and the aim is simply to introduce the student to the period in a logical, engaging fashion. Unfortunately, the book only succeeds in the latter department.

The book would have done well to better define history as a study. While a certain amount of legendary material is necessary for the period under consideration, it's important for the student to know the difference between legends about real people and things we know for certain about those people. In addition, there is mythological material which is more appropriate in a literary or religious context. There are a few Bible stories, Siddhartha (Buddha), Jesus and several Greek myths are presented. While these stories and figures have bearing on history and are culturally significant, I think their handling is ultimately confusing to the student since they are not presented in a strict historical context. Jesus' resurrection is related in the same matter of fact tone as the rest of the book. Nowhere does the author state whether or not he really came back to life. His death is attributed to the fears of the Romans ("If the Jewish people had a king of their own, they wouldn't want to obey Augustus Caesar any more.") This nonsensical statement makes it sound like a competition between the two great figures, when in fact Augustus had already been dead for 19 years, and the then current emperor Tiberius couldn't have cared less about what happened in a troublesome backwater province, so long as the tax levies flowed back to Rome. The book often shifts between historical and legendary points of view without alerting the reader to the change. This is a serious defect in a book whose audience members are just starting to be able to effectively differentiate between fantasy and reality. I'm not saying these figures and beliefs should not be presented, but facts and legends must be teased apart by the parent for the student, lest misconceptions take root. If you are not well acquainted with history, you may fall prey to a few misconceptions yourself!

The book does not employ the chronological approach recommended in Bauer's other book, "The Well-Trained Mind." The text jumps back and forth across centuries, even millennia. The late Babylonian empire is followed by the Minoan civilization of Crete, a backward jump of 1500 years. This happens a lot. The chapters can be read out of sequence with some difficulty (what we did), but it would have been better if the information were presented in a more logical sequence.

The book omits important details and peoples. There is nothing about the Celts, except in passing in one section on the Gallic Wars and another on the British rebellion during the early Roman empire. Pretty short shrift for a people who ranged across most of Europe for a millenium or two and whose culture has had such a deep and lasting influence. In the chapter on Alexander, Aristotle's tutelage of Alexander is not mentioned, nor is the burning of Persepolis. A previous chapter devotes space to this royal Persian city, why not follow through and connect the dots?

Vaguely inaccurate statements such as these are staples of the text: "Alexander's army was the best in the world." Well, really, Alexander's army had a great general, a revolutionary strategist. The Persian army he defeated was arguably "greater," but they were defeated by Alexander's boldness and cunning. "Alexander was the greatest king of ancient times." Well, he only ruled for 12 years, he was on campaign that entire time, and so didn't do much in the way of administrating his new empire, writing law or other "kingly" work. He was arguably the greatest general of ancient times. I think a 7 year old can understand these distinctions. Thus it seems at times as if the text is unnecessarily simplified. Certainly the author could have subsituted "greatest general" for "greatest king" and described the army as the "smartest" or "fastest," either of which would have been more accurate and more revealing.

So while the book has been enjoyable, it's also been very aggravating, and I'm frankly surprised by the lack of careful editing/fact-checking, given the author's views on education.

146 of 153 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I really, really wanted to love this book!, August 13, 2006

By 

Lydia Joyce - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child; Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (Paperback)

I really wanted to love this book. I was seeking an engaging survey of ancient history told in an accessible manner for young children. While it partially accomplished that goal, the book had a number of flaws.

First, its format:

This book consists of 42 chapters, starting in the Neolithic Age and ending with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Each chapter is divided into one to three smaller sections. Some sections are straight-forward historical accounts. Others are retellings of Bible stories, fictionalizations of various events, or representations of myths or legends. The book attempts to cover the entire history of the world, but only a total of eight of the 42 chapter cover areas other than the Mediterranean world. Part of this is inevitable--many areas of the world were still in prehistoric ages during much of this book. However, some was by choice--SWB believes in the importance of emphasizing the Western tradition, and this comes through in the book. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, the book still does a better job of presenting nonWestern cultures than any of the alternative to this book that I've seen. There are a handful of illustrations and stock blackline maps. The book is self-published. There is an accompanying workbook with activities and questions. I did not buy the workbook.

Its strengths:

Overall, the objective is admirable: To create an accessible history of the ancient world that small children find interesting. I admire the goal quite a bit and am very sympathetic to it.

Given her goals and her emphasis, SWB did an excellent job overall in selecting the topics for the sections. She deals with a lack of information--for example, about very early sub-Saharan Africa--quite well.

The stories are quite accessible and are often interesting to young children. Few children will have a hard time understanding the stories.

Now, on to the problems:

First, the fact that the book is self-published shows in several typos, the frequent misuse of commas, and in a great fondness for exclamation marks. I know it sounds like a small thing...but it really is distracting.

Second, the tone is meant to be conversational but is often simplistic to the point of being condescending. Much of the book isn't as well-written as I would like, especially the retellings and fictionalizations. I've read excerpts from her later books, and she does get much better!

Third, she does a poor job between distinguishing between a factual narrative, a retelling of a religious text, a fictionalization of an historical event, and a retelling of a myth or legend. This could cause a great deal of confusion for a young child.

Fourth, there really is a need for a pronuciation guide for most parents! Not many will have heard "Ashurbanipal" before.

Fifth, and this is the biggest issue for me, there's a problem of accuracy throughout the text. Some errors are sheer sloppiness--she writes "flocks" when she means "herds", "vitamins" when she means "nutrients". Others are more troubling. She states that she's going to tell the story of Abram from the Bible and then freely mixes in Midrashic (extrabiblical) sources and free interpretations. She decribes New Kingdom mummification practices in the section about the Old Kingdom and the pyramids. She declares that farmers fed their livestock on grain. She makes a big deal out of the fact that early "cave men"-type nomads didn't bathe...and we would know this how? Heiroglyphs were mostly character- and syllabic-based, NOT "picture-writing," as she claims. She regularly confuses what we call places and people in English with what the people of the time and culture refered to called them--for example, Pharoah (Egyptians NEVER called their king "Pharoah") and Mesopotamia (which is Greek and not what the Babylonians or Assyrians called the area). She states that Pharoahs weren't buried in mastaba tombs when they had been before the invention of the pyramid. She states that the pyramid capstones were plated with gold when they were plated with electrum, an alloy of silver and gold. She informs the reader that the Minoan civilization was destroyed by the eruption of Thera when it really flourished two centuries after that explosion. She implies that the modern Olympics have decended from the ancient Olympics in an unbroken line of tradition. She badly distorts several Bible stories in unecessary ways--I assume out of a desire for simplicity and brevity, but the distortions are unecessary.

These are errors I remembered off the top of my head. I did no fact-checking--these are just mistakes I caught as I was reading to my son. Most errors are minor, but there are simply so MANY that I found myself correcting several errors per reading session.

Sixth, SWB often fails to clearly present important concepts, like the mutually assistive relationship between archeology and history and many important technological innovations and their impacts, that would be acceptible for this level.

I know that many people love The Well-Trained Mind, The Story of the World, and everything SWB has written. But I can only recommend it with a very strong caveat to most users.