Customer Reviews

World History for Dummies

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I got this book because I wanted to refresh my knowledge of world history and I figured I could actually make it all the way through (as opposed to the huge volumes out there by other authors). I wasn't disappointed. It was easy and entertaining reading with a good format. The organization of the book is very helpful to enable people to put together the histories of various civilizations. I now have a clear picture of how the Inca, Mayan, and Aztec fit into the scope of world history (and numerous other cultures and historical figures are now clear in my mind).

That said, there were a few annoyances. The first and biggest, was the FREQUENT use of parenthetical statements referring the reader to other sections of the book for more information about a particular subject. Not only did these interrupt the flow of thought, but they were generally useless (vaguely referring the reader to another chapter, but not telling where within the chapter the subject is covered). Either eliminating these completely or placing them in the margin would have greatly improved the readability of the book.

The second annoyance was that there were some obvious errors in the information given. The accepted age of the earth, as mentioned by another reviewer, was one. He repeated the false urban legend that the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie" came from the black plague. There were a few other errors I detected as well. This made me question the level of research the author did and raised doubts about the accuracy of other sections (though in general I think it was pretty accurate).

Overall, I'd recommend this for anyone that wants a readable introduction into world history. It would be helpful for either a student currently studying it or an adult wanting a refresher course.

I read the review about the annoying parenthetical comments, but thought Winters was just over-reacting. Having obtained and read the book myself, I must thoroughly apologize to Winters.

The parenthetical comments are *EXTREMELY* annoying!

Haugen, the author, thinks he's making the text more modular (he encourages the reader to skip around), but he just makes reading the book feel like you're watching a tv show with a commercial break everytime the story gets interesting. (Your book has an index, Haugen. Let the reader use it.)

That said, this is a pretty good review of world history, quickly summarizing thousands and thousands of years into a short, readable volume. It also has a good survey of philosophy, religion, and the instruments of war. For an introduction to world history, the content is 150% there. (I just wish there weren't so many useless parenthetical references.)

Oh, one other (big) criticism: there are only two maps in the entire book and neither were very helpful, so I recommend "Atlas of World History" by John Haywood as an awesome companion piece.

World History for Dummies is valuable if you have already read more extensive literature on world history. In that respect, I would recommend it as a refresher, a tool to jar your memory of more indepth texts.

Major advancements in western history, including ancient societies such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and of course Greece and Rome are covered. Other civilizations are represented as well, though not in as much detail as western civs. Examples include China, Japan, Aztecs, and Incas.

I would recommend that an historical text on geography accompany this book as maps are scarce and the ones available aren't very comprehensive. This is a particular peeve since it is often nice to have a visual perspective of what is being studied.

All in all, a good "reference for the rest of us", but not a text I would recommend for the first-time reader.

I absolutely love this book. As a multiple-subject teacher who is teaching 7th grade medieval & renaissance world history plus 8th grade U.S. History, I needed to bone up on history, fast!
This book has four different histories of the world: events, ideas & beliefs, war, and key people. They are all sketchy, but provide an invaluable overview. In fact I found they had just the right amount of detail to allow me to finally get an overview that I can retain, which is what I desperately needed. The author's humorous and insightful point of view are helpful also.
Now when I read more detailed works, I have a "mental file cabinet" I can fit the information into. The book also has a short timeline accompanying every chapter, which was helpful in my picking some key events and dates to have my students commit to memory.
In summary, I've read or looked at many world histories, and this is one of my absolute top picks, especially for "beginners."

Far from comprehensive and lacking in detail one would think World History for Dummies would be a disaster. Because of Peter Haugen's entertaining but taught writing the reader will get a great outline of major concepts of world history.

I am aprehensive of books that adhere to a formula like the Dummies books do but Haugen works with skill within the formula making a strong impression on the subjects he writes about. There are no particular political viewpoints and discussions, while light, are treated thoughtfully and transparent of the author's politics.

I was attracted to this book when I realized my apalling lack of memory on the basics in world history. I wanted to know about why things happened, how historical events came to be and in this simple volume I got a clue along with ideas on where to continue reading.

This is a book parents can give to their kids knowing it will help augment the sometimes boring classwork and keeping the idea that history is about people and can be as exciting as any fiction they read or see in film and television.

I can't recommend this fine review of world history high enough. That does not mean it is without fault. At times the tone of the prose is condesending although it is quite possible that this is part of the format of Dummies books as the other couple of books in this series try to disamingly walk readers through concepts that may require humor to disarm otherwise intimidating subject matter.

In the end, World History for Dummies is a useful primer for adults or school age children. My favorite feature of this book is Peter Haugen's gentle reminder of multiple disciplines involved in the understanding of the world that formed the civilization we now live in.

I would have stopped reading this book after about chapter 2. I wanted to finish it just to see if it would get better. It didn't...it was poorly written, terribly organized, and also made me think the author was using free association when he began to write this book (which is evident to his annoying, valueless references to other chapters every few paragraphs).

The back cover touts that he puts the "story" in History. Nothing could be further from the truth. The book itself is somewhat boring, because there isn't enough detail to make a story. The books major problem is simple. It's jammed and crammed with trivial facts, facts that mean nothing unless they're strung together with some concept or generalization to take away from it. Rather than cover an important topic well, he's seemingly opted to give every event and every no-name empire a place in his book by devoting a few sentences to each and every one of them but not enough to allow any true of true understanding of what he's talking about. At the end of the book, I was left with a strange sensation of feeling like I knew nothing about a lot of things.

Often times the amount of detail he goes into leaves you wondering what happened in huge gaps of time he's left out (or perhaps he refers to the gap he just created in another chapter). The point is, you're left not having any real idea of what was going on because you can't fit it together in any way.

I'd love to speak with someone that learned history only from this book. They'd sound like a historian at their first comment about history (due to all the highly obscure details he dips quickly in and out of), but as soon as I asked one question about it, they'd be at a complete loss. The book fails to provide enough details to make you seem intelligent sounding in any area he writes about and the book fails to deliver generalizations and concepts because they were too fractured because of the terrible outlay of the book.

Dummies books are typically great books...this one was not. While this book is not a total loss, I would never ever recommend it.

How many times can an author say "as covered in chapter..." or "see chapter .." If you want to find out, read this book. It gets so bad that all you do is focus on how terrible a writer this guy is and not on the content of the book.

Im still not sure exactly how the book was organized. Whether by time or content or subject. I guess it really wasn't organized at all.

Im sorry that I don't have a better book to recommend, but I can tell you to save your time on this one.

This book will not please the "hard-core" history students because it truncates so much detail. But the intention of the book is not to provide an exhaustive account of world history. Instead, the purpose of the book is to provide some overview of key historical events in our past. A large portion of the book is spent on narrating the numerous empires that ruled before (in Eygpt, Europe, and Asia). Note that there is hardly any mention of US History. There is a separate book for that.

I agree with other reviewers that the book isn't as well organized. There are many abrupt endings and pieces that didn't seem to fit. It would be better if the book has better editing to make the overall picture sounds more coherant. On another aspect, I do like the several chapters on the different religions and how they got started. It provides a good summary of that, but there are probably better books for more details. In summary, if you are like me, who is a student in physics, you can learn all you need about world history with just this book. I don't need an encyclopedia; I just need a short read to "brush up" my history. In that case, this book suits me fine.

As a lover of History, I got this book to help ensure that if I had any obvious holes in my general World History knowledge, that I could find them out and patch them up.

I'm still going through the book, but I feel I have enough information thus far to give a decent review. It looks to have most of the essentials of a nice little Western Civ/World History survey class. Which is pretty much what I was looking for. One must understand that cramming the HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE WORLD into a single volume book is daunting, and if the book is a "For Dummies" book, it's impossible. But, all things considered, the author did a fine job. I recommend this book, but I'd get it used and cheaper (I paid $5 for my like-new copy, shipping included, right here on Amazon).

My complaints? Not many. The only thing I can complain about is what is very common in, shall we say, Liberal Arts books these days. That, of course, is revisionist (the dreaded) "PC" history.

Look, I understand that decades ago Americans were taught a very rose-tinted version of American and World History. No one denies this. As a matter of fact, show me a society back then that gave an entirely unbiased historical account of their country and I'll eat my hat.

My problem, however, is that for the past decade or two there has been a movement to counter this in such a radical way that historians now present most European/Christian/(White people in general) very negatively, in relation to other peoples of the world. Again, I understand and sympathize that you are trying to counter earlier viewpoints. The problem is that children today are ONLY getting this radical backlash.

Ignore the PC rhetoric and just use the book for what it is: a survey.

Author covers a lot of ground in a very entertaining style. Not a lot of depth in any one area, but this could be expected from such an overview.

On the down side: Pictures and maps were just about useless. Questionable organization - constant references between chapters was distracting and annoying. Attempts to be too "politically correct" - constant apologetic comments come off as patronizing - most people are smart enough to read between the lines.