A fast-paced, lavishly illustrated social history of the world -- explore the day-to-day life of ordinary people from the Stone Age to the turn of the 20th century. It includes the exciting, funny, interesting stories that give an accurate picture of how people lived.
This was one of the Reader's Digest books my mom bought when I was a kid, and it helped instill in me that world history-or any history-is not just a dry set of dates, places, and persons to be memorized. History is more than that. It is about STORIES. His story, her story, their stories, OUR STORY. It's about kings, queens, warriors, traders, and common people like workers, farmers, children, families. People like the rest of us, just in different times and places. History is never dead. We are living it, and today's stories are tomorrow's history.
The most important thing is that it shows how people lived in the past. There are many illustrations so you can easily imagine it. In my country, we are taught during the lessons of history almost only about wars, kings and so on. In my opinion it is wrong. We should be taught about everyday life of the people to understand them. Otherwise, we will be doing the same error - judging them through our opinions, our modern world. But we mustn't do it. People in the past lived in different world, they struggle with different difficulties, they had different views. We must see them through their world, their point of view.
By the by, every fan of historical fiction can verify here many aspects of the world which writers create in their books.
Not much of this type of history about life of people over a great period of time is written. Though it’s far from scholarly it is very accessible. It ventures to the other worlds of Oceania, Australia. The illustrations are great.
Good little coffee table read. I read it cover to cover and it contains information of historical times from prehistoric times to the 19th century. It covers many different regions across the world as well. Interesting for those that are into history. However, I did find that it contained a few pieces of inaccurate information that I was aware of from my reading elsewhere. They may be more that I am not aware of as well. But overall a good read.
A good introductory source for those who don't know much about the people of different ages and want to learn a little bit about all of it. I specifically read the parts in this book about the Celtic and Germanic tribes, the Saxons and Ancient China, all of which I learned a lot about. Had I had more time to read further, I am sure I would have discovered many more interesting facts of history.