Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just for kids!, March 23, 2002
One of the great bonuses of parenting is that you get to introduce books to your own kids that wowed you when you were a kid yourself. Sometimes your children love the books as much as you did; sometimes they don't. But in either case, you get to revisit with old friends and see how much you and they have changed and retained over the years.Some of my best book friends when I was a kid were the wonderful illustrated histories of Genevieve Foster, and the one I loved most was *Augustus Caesar's World.* I recently introduced it (and a few others: *Washington's World*, *Lincoln's World*, *John Smith's World*, *Columbus's World*) to my 8 year old, and he's discovering the magic in them I did so many years ago. There are three qualities to *Augustus Caesar's World* that make it so entertaining and educating. The first is that it's incredibly well written. Foster has the gift of breathing life into historical accounts. In reading about Cicero's execution or the life of Siddhartha, for example, one experiences all the dreadful waste of the one and the liberating wonder of the other. Second, the book is wonderfully illustrated by Foster herself. The illustrations are themselves instructive: along with individual scenarios, she provides time-lines, illustrated most fetchingly, that conveniently encapsulate events and persons. Finally, Foster's histories are really world histories. In *Augustus Caesar's World,* she focuses on the events leading up to the end of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Empire (roughly, 44BCE to 14 CE). But she doesn't limit herself to Roman history; she also examines events taking place across the world during the time frame in which she's working: the druids in Gaul, Hindus in India, Confucius in China, Mayans in the Americas, and so on. She even includes intellectual history: the origins of Christianity and Buddhism, the Upanishadic culture of the Hindus, etc. Her aim is to give the reader a wide angle of vision, and she succeeds wonderfully. I'm grateful that Foster's histories are being republished. They don't patronize kids by resorting to silly gimmicks that supposedly make learning more palatable (or at least more marketable). Instead, they make history fascinating the old fashioned way: by showing that it's a great story in its own right. They're a great discovery for my son, and a great rediscovery for me.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great history book for all ages!, August 28, 2000
This book was on the reading list in my daughter's 3rd grade curriculum. We read it together and found it fascinating. At first I thought it might be above her reading level, but it was just right. What surprised me was how interested she was in it. Genevieve Foster did a wonderful job with this book. I would also recommend her other history books on: Columbus, John Smith, and George Washington. One thing that makes all these books interesting is that Foster writes about most of the important events taking place around the main character; not just in the immediate vicinity, but in other countries. She gives a global outlook.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a very good, very informative book and easy reading!, October 10, 1998
By A Customer
I enjoyed this book so much! It is the story of Caesar Augustus and the world he lived in. The book starts out with Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Julius's murder. It discusses Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, Octavian and Lepidus, the formation of the triumvirate and the events which led to Octavian becoming the single head of Rome and his name becoming Augustus. The story of Augustus continues through the reign of his great-great grandson Nero. The "World" of Augusus Caeser is shown in chapters placed between accounts of Caesar's life. The author shows the development and changes that were going on around the world at that time. This was so interesting! Besides getting a good picture of Rome, I read about The Festival of Lights and King Herod in Jerusalem, Horace, Virgil and Isaiah; the calanders of the Mayans, how Buddism came to China and who Confucius was. This is a good book that connected many well known, but formerly disconnected, events together in my mind by providing a time line. The author has a few other books that work the same way set at other times in our world's history and I am planning to read those, too.
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