Everything You Need to Ace World History in One Big Fat Notebook, 2nd Edition: The Complete School Study Guide

Everything You Need...in One Big Fat Notebook

by Ximena Vengoechea

It’s the revolutionary world history study guide just for middle school students from the brains behind Brain Quest.
    
Everything You Need to Ace World History . . . kicks off with the Paleolithic Era and transports the reader to ancient civilizations—from Africa and beyond; the middle ages across the world; the Renaissance; the age of exploration and colonialism, revolutions, and the modern world and the wars and movements that shaped it.

The BIG FAT NOTEBOOK™ series is built on a simple and irresistible conceit—borrowing the notes from the smartest kid in class. There are five books in all, and each is the only one book you need for each main subject taught in middle school: Math, Science, American History, English, and World History. Inside the reader will find every subject’s key concepts, easily digested and summarized: Critical ideas highlighted in marker colors. Definitions explained. Doodles that illuminate tricky concepts. Mnemonics for a memorable shortcut. And quizzes to recap it all.

The BIG FAT NOTEBOOKS meet Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and state history standards, and are vetted by National and State Teacher of the Year Award–winning teachers. They make learning fun, and are the perfect next step for every kid who grew up on Brain Quest.
 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Education, Reference, World History, Textbooks, School

576 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2016

About the author

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, and illustrator whose work on personal and professional development has been published in Inc., The Washington Post, Newsweek, Forbes, and Huffington Post. She is the author of the book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection (Portfolio/Penguin Random House). Her second book Rest Easy, received a starred review from Library Journal and was a BookRiot Best Book of the Year in 2023. Her most recent book, The Life Audit, and its companion, The Life Audit Journal, are based on her popular project, The Life Audit.

Ximena is a contributor at Fast Company and The Muse, and writes Letters from Ximena, a newsletter about personal growth and human behavior at ximena.substack.com. She is also the creator of the popular project The Life Audit. She previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Reviews

[Umar Lateef · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a great injustice to Islamic history, what about Islamic golden age, what about all the mathematicians and masters of physics and many more sciences which made renaissance possible. I am so disappointed by the injustice to rich Islamic history.

[MarkusQ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly well done, but with some egregious mistakes that should have been caught in editing.

For example, on pages 10-16 we are repeatedly told that "The Great Migration" started 80,000 years ago and took about 1,000,000 years. Apparently, we've got another 920,000 years to go?

Then, on pages 36 through 40, we are give the sequence:

Sumeria, ~4000 BC
Akkadia, ~2300 BC
Babylon, ~1800 BC
Assyria, ~1400 BC
Chaldeans (in Babylon), ~600 BC

And are told we can remember this order with the mnemonic:

Starving (Sumerians)
Apes (Assyrians)
Attacked (Akkadians)
Bananas (Babylonians)

And so on.

[Carlos Guerrero · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, you will find different topics in each chapter, that mention an important part in World History. The setting takes place in different continents around the world such as; Africa, Japan, China, Europe, Germany, Italy, Russia, Hungary, US and other continents. The point of view of the writer, is to help other middle school kids just like himself to ACE (pass) World History and to pass this notebook to others to help them ACE the class. Some of the major characters start with Lucy, who is a famous Australopithecus hominid, King Sargon I, Justinian the greatest Byzantine emperor, Christopher Columbus, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama and many more.

In my opinion, the book was very good and easy to understand. The drawing, colors, pictures and definitions were very helpful and made the book interesting and not boring. Each chapter mentioned an important time in World History. Each chapter had a very interesting character that made a difference in a good or a bad way. I liked the book a lot because now I know what we will be learning for the rest of the school year in 6TH grade.
My favorite chapter was chapter 9, World War II because the US wins against Germany, Japan surrenders and Hitler dies. I would recommend this book to any new 6th grader, to get a head start in history class and enjoy it, just like I did.

-Carlos

[Dawn]

This was not world history. The first half of this book fairly effectively covered ancient civilizations, but the second half was straight up European history - very biased, ignored lots of the lost interesting things. Overall I was very disappointed smh

[Allen Central · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to quickly go back to chapters but it lacked a bunch of stuff from the Canadian curriculum (First Nations people, Canadian conferences etc.).

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for an overview. Don't expect anything in-depth.

[Mary-Therese P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Occasional biased information, but as a whole quite good. The use of humor as a means of educating was very effective

[Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was phenomenal. The details and visual information had you look at history in a different perspective. Like the American History book, it talked about how people make the same mistakes if the do not learn from history. Also, the format of the book was great to. The transitions from chapter to chapter were great. Each chapter had a short preview of what was going to be covered in the beginning, and a quick quiz to make sure you fully understood the chapter. The theme for this book would probably be don't get into conflicts. The book talked about how many countries which went to war either lost, or won carrying large debts. In the end, wars hurt a country more than they help one.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is fine as an easy refresher on world history for adults. As a middle school textbook, it's inadequate, though it could be used as a supplementary text.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Designed for middle school students, this self-teaching history covers world history from ancient times to the modern period. It is easy too read and has self test questions.

[akissforcatullus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book to help inspire going down rabbit holes of research as well as offering a timeline of events in history, which is something I needed because I typically gloss over dates, but since the book is set out chronologically it’s more clear to see what events influenced others.

It’s easy to read and succinct and to the point. Which is also exactly what I need as history can get confusing, especially when you learn it in a mismatched way and without historical context i.e. without knowing what had happened beforehand to lead up to this point.

This was clear when I got up to ‘The Berlin Wall’, which I knew it was a border between East and West Berlin, but I didn’t have a crystal clear understanding of why it formed nor why certain countries were involved, but thanks to this handy book and it’s uncomplicatedness I know now.

What particularly intrigued me to learn was that Napoleon was responsible for creating nationalism: ...“The feeling that the people in each country were linked to each other through a common culture, not through loyalty to a monarch. The rise of nationalism was partly a response to Napoleon's rule: Napoleon had united the French people by encouraging national songs and holidays and promoting patriotism through flags and other symbols.”... And then I learnt that ‘The American Revolution’ inspired ‘The French Revolution’. Perhaps that’s common sense, but I for some reason thought ‘The French Revolution’ came first.

This book shows the bigger picture rather than the small details of history, and since it dates from Prehistory till the year 2020 it is quite impressive. It’s definitely centred on the more relevant parts of history—specifically the relevant parts of an American school’s curriculum, which… considering that this book is a school study guide it makes sense. But I gotta say, Australia could’ve been mentioned more than just the “Australian bushfires”, like perhaps while the book detailed the happenings of the late 1700s or during the topics of imperialism and colonialism, be it just a sentence: “during this time the First Fleet set sail for Australia, extending British imperialism all the way out there.” or something like that. It’s one of the major British colonies so it’d make sense not to miss mentioning.

I think a good addition in the book would’ve been pages that were titled “also during this time:” and then insert brief descriptions of historical events that were happening in lesser spoken about countries at the same time as a major event.

To fault this work on its lack of detail or on the historical events it left out is not hard to do, but in my eyes the overall immensity and effectiveness of the book gives it much more positives than negatives.

[Sofia Boquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you see a book with the title ‘World History’ it’s important to look up where the author is from and who the targeted audience is. This book is written for elementary school in America and that means that ‘world history’ will be the history of Europe and America. Now this book did contain the history of other continents especially in the beginning when going through the biggest civilizations before CE, the Middle Ages and how the five major religions came to be (which took up roughly 1/3 of the book). But after checking that off the list it only mentioned other continents if it had something to do with European imperialism.

I think this book is a good introduction into world history no matter your age because it’s easy to understand. It also give you a clear picture of the overall history of the western world so it’s easy for you to go ahead yourself and continue reading up on topics that you find interesting.The book is laid out to look like a notebook which I really enjoyed because it’s more fun to read and not pages upon pages of black text.

[Lore · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

[Ali Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you need to ace world history from the first human to the age of the internet. The book contains multiple diagrams and maps that help in understanding world history.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I should read part by part depending on what I’m focusing on class bc I forgot everything I read

[Allie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Accessible refreshers!

[Piyush Behera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice read..

[Chris Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy, enjoyable overview of world history topics, with humorous pictures and fun facts. This is pretty barebones though. It barely skims the surface of historical events, which is fine for somebody reviewing a test or looking to quickly brush up on their history.

But as others have noted, it leaves out important details. The Atlantic Slave Trade, for instance is completely missing, despite the fact it was a worldwide event spanning five continents. Slavery’s only mention, in fact, is in relation to the American Civil War. Another problem is the book’s US-centric approach at about the halfway mark. I’m sure this information is repeated in the US History version of this book series, so why not devote those sections to more information about other countries?

Overall I was glad for the world history review but left wanting.

[Aprilleigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there is a strong bias to Western civilization, this volume does a pretty good job of covering other cultures, particularly in ancient and medieval times. To be a true world history it would need additional chapters covering Asia, Africa, and South America. That said, it covers the same things most textbooks cover, which was likely the intent. Much like the U.S. History volume in this series, the coverage is very basic and will not replace a textbook. It will, however, serve as a nice overview. I’m not sure the coverage is sufficient to be a review. The topic is just too big and it’s difficult to cover everything adequately.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick read and a great brush up on world history. I enjoyed it.

[Dora Resendez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an easy to read informational book.

[Ethan · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book could have added a little more detail.

[Indy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never studied history in my entire student life, and didn’t seem to be interested in reading anything in history for the reason that “history repeats itself” - people never learn from history and make the same mistakes. Meanwhile, studying history cannot right the wrongs. It may sound ignorant, but that’s why I was never interested in studying all the warfare matters.

However, I am interested in how cultures, arts and science evolve, especially travelling in European countries. Therefore, I picked up this book to have a background understanding of what’s going on in the world.

This book targets high school students, and is written in an attractive way with lots of funny illustrations, and different highlights and fonts for various historical events, terms and famous people. It was an easy and fun read, which allows you to have a brief glance to the entire history of human race. Yet, I was more attentive to the cultural history, and skimmed through all the warfares without taking in much. Did my best, I guess history is just really not my cup of tea.

[Tavian Lirette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even with my gripes over some of the other "Big Fat Notebooks", I always found them nonetheless very informative & broad in their scope, while being simple to process & understand - crucial for my education. Not so much with the Notebook concerning "World History". The book's first several sections fit the bill well, going into details about several great civilizations across the globe. But then when it begins to look toward the rise of Europe & its world conquest errands, that becomes pretty much all the book talks about. Colonization indeed had repercussions across the planet, but that doesn't mean Western nations & their neighbors were the only important things in the world. & what's the deal with all the mnemonics? Even as a student learning from the Big Fat Notebooks, I found it much easier to just remember the names of people & events from their importance than some silly anecdote. You'll learn what you need to pass in the school curriculum's eyes with this installment, but the school curriculum being the sole focus affected this Big Fat Notebook worse than the others.

[Obed M. Parlapiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short review for now: Tittle long book of the history of the world. Great for students of if you're looking to fit spaces in your knowledge of world history.

The good: everything is kind of covered. The important stuff at least.

The bad: it skips over a lot of interesting and important stuff, gives no reasons as to why a lot of things happened and sometimes gives a bit of erroneous info. I'm forgiving these mistakes and giving 4 stars because it's A LOT of info crammed into a book.

The very good: you HAVE TO remember a lot of the stuff, the format is amazing and great to keep you (or a student) entertained throughout the book, be it by the drawings or by highlighting.

The not so bad: this is really for students and not so much for avid readers, I knew most of what was said but it was really enjoyable nonetheless.

Would definitely recommend to a younger audience (for whom the book is targeted to anyway).

[Ibrahim Zayed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book because I explains in detail everything you need to now about world history. From the first civilizations to the modern era. Explains each civilization or battle or even every in perfect detail. Personally my favriot section is when the book talks about the Phoenicians. Overall this is amazing when you really are interested in history. It inspired my love for the subject by revealing everything about history and reavealing the joy there is to reading the book and the subject. Overall irate the story 5 stars because of hw it explains every important event in history and how much detail is put in section

[Rubi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was filled with SO much information in a small package. I loved the format and illustrations and how when it talked about other cultures and religions, it did not seem to degrade them or make them seem ridiculous, it just stated facts and information, plain and simple. I also noticed it did not shy away from letting us know when the U.S. didn't do their part (for example not signing the treaty for less carbon emissions), which is great! True history book that doesn't blindly make anyone out to be bad or good. It was enjoyable to read, actually and it both refreshed my memory and taught me new things, i loved it.

[Alvin Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is cool, and it gives knowledge about different civilisations and culture and the history about it and lists important things that happened in history of Earth. For example, discoveries or plagues or wars or international events. It has stuff that makes you memorise things more quickly and that’s a good thing. Quizzes are also there to check if you have learnt anything from the book. The book ends by talking about the modern society and what’s happening in the present. However, I think this book has missed out some important points of the World’s history, and included most of the ancient civilisations’ culture, which I don’t know if it is good or bad.

[Suwitcha Chandhorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

เป็นหนังสือบันทึกประวัติศาสตร์ใน theme เลคเชอร์นักเรียน มันก็เลยเต็มไปด้วยภาพประกอบลายเส้นและแถบสีสันน่าอ่าน มีข้อความสั้น ๆ ในจุดสำคัญ ชอบวิธีการเล่าเรื่องที่ง่ายและกระชับ ทำให้รู้เรื่องราวคร่าว ๆ ในตอนนั้น ๆ ได้ในไม่กี่บรรทัด เรียกว่าเอาแต่เนื้อ ๆ มาจริง ๆ หนังสือดูหนาเพราะตัวอักษรใหญ่ มันไม่ได้ครอบคลุมพื้นที่ในประวัติศาสตร์กว้างมากนัก เรียกได้ว่าคัดเลือกเอาเรื่องที่คิดว่าเราควรรู้มาเสียมากกว่า

สรุปว่าชอบนะ คงเป็นเล่มที่จะพลิกอ่านอีกบ่อย ๆ เวลาอยากจะทบทวนอะไรสั้น ๆ