DWD's Reviews

A fun way to get your essential bits of history  As a history teacher, I think just about all of history is fascinating - the cultural tidbits, the technology, the religious beliefs, the wars, the governments. It's all fascinating! But...convincing my students is another matter entirely. This series does an excellent job of looking at history from an interesting point of view and showing why it was tough. The art is accessible and just cartoonish enough to not be one of those boring illustrations that fill history books and plenty realistic enough that to clearly see and understand what is going on (for example, the women who are weaving on pages 16 & 17 are cartoonish but their loom looks pretty realistic). In You Wouldn't Want to Be a Slave in Ancient Greece , you learn a lot about slavery in general that can be applied to any time - the drudgery and humiliation, the loss of freedom and the uncertainty. There is also a lot of Ancient Greece-specific infor...

This is a great series I recently stumbled onto the You Wouldn't Want to... series and have found them to be a delightful and painless way to introduce young people to different historical concepts. You Wouldn't Want to Live In Pompeii is a standout in a standout series of books. It teaches about the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 that destroyed Pompeii, but it also teaches about Roman culture. The readers will learn that the Romans used enslaved Greek men as teachers for their sons, that the Romans made sacrifices to their gods, foods they ate, types of art, the gladiatorial games and the re-discovery of Pompeii in the 1700s and, more importantly, the archaeological work of Guiseppe Fiorelli in the late 1800s. This would be great for 3rd grade or higher. Even adults can have a good basic understanding of what happened at Pompeii with this little book. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Reviewed on June 12, 2009.

An entertaining, historically solid book - for 4th graders and over Originally published in 2001 by Franklin Watts. Illustrated by David Antram. You Wouldn,t Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!  is entertaining and it contains solid, accurate history presented in a visually interesting format. While I've been looking a few of the books from this series for my own personal entertainment, my almost 4th grade daughter has been sneaking them out of the stack and reading them without any encouragement from me. Imagine! Kids surreptitiously reading history! The book details the life of a gladiator that is captured as a slave in battle in Gaul. We follow him to his sale in the market and what kind of jobs he might have been sent to (in the mines, as a galley slave, on the farm, etc.) The slave is sent to gladiator school and we learn about their training, what they ate, the different types of gladiators and how they were punished. We learn about different types of gladiator fights and how g...

Enjoyable Published in 1996 by Tyndale House Publishers Synopsis: Like the cover says, The Life and Times of the Apostle Paul is "a colorful retelling of the world's most famous mission story." Ball is an amateur expert on the 1st century Roman empire and has personally led tour groups throughout the cities that Paul visited during his mission trips to Asia Minor and Greece. He covers Paul's life from early childhood in his work so it must be considered historical fiction since so many details of Paul's life and his trips that are included in this book  are not actually covered in the book of Acts or in his epistles. It is an enjoyable book - not a great work by any means but I enjoyed reading it and felt that I learned a little something along the way as well. The details on the life around the Jerusalem temple and about the cities Paul visited make it worth reading, even if you are not a great fan of Paul. I give this book 4 stars out of 5. This book c...

Published by Franklin Watts in 2007. I discovered this series earlier this summer and I've been looking at a few of them. My 4th grade daughter and I both love the series That being said, You Wouldn't Want to Be Tutankhamen!: A Mummy Who Really Got Meddled With is not quite as good as the rest of the series, which means it is merely the cleverest, funniest, most interestingly illustrated book that a child aged 9-12 or so can pick up concerning King Tut. I like the series because kids learn without having to read some of the more tedious books out there (such as the great majority of the history textbooks out there!) I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. Reviewed on July 7, 2009. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: You Wouldn't Want to Be Tutankhamen!: A Mummy Who Really Got Meddled with

Disappointing. Published in 2004 by Basic Books. I really enjoyed The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 (I gave it 4 stars) . I was not thrilled with The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (I gave it 2 stars) and I have to say that I do not care much for The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization either. In fact, to be short and sweet let me just say that if you see my review about The Great Warming   and add in an extended discussion about mankind in the Ice Age you will pretty much have the substance of The Long Summer . The two books could have easily have been made into one slightly larger book. I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization . Reviewed on December 18, 2010.

Enthusiastic but disjointed Published in 2010. Erich von Daniken is most famous for his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods in which he put forth the theory that civilization was brought to earth by alien space travellers that taught some humans their ways and this is the source of the world's major religions and brought mankind from the caveman era to civilization in places such as Egypt. He believes that this truth is documented in the art and writings of the ancient civilizations. The 1970s documentary In Search of Ancient Astronauts . Just to be fair to those that read this review, I do not espouse von Daniken's beliefs, but I do find him to be interesting and I enjoy reading about the connections that he sees. Pumu Punku In  Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials von Daniken expounds upon his theory with a bit with more examples of items that should pique the interest of those that endorse von Daniken's asserti...

I love this series Published in 2006 by Coldwater Media I teach history in a public school so using this Drive Thru History: East Meets West  in my classroom is not a viable option due to the contemporary religious references. However, if you are in a Christian school or homeschool with a Christian emphasis I can enthusiastically recommend this series. East Meets West has two 30 minute plus programs about Turkey and Asia Minor. Turkey is literally where the Middle East meets the West. In episode 1, Dave Stotts takes us to Cappadocia, a unique area with an underground city and roots in the Old Testament and in the post-Biblical era as a scene of anti-Christian persecution by both the Romans and the Muslims. Episode 2 is the stronger of the two. It covers the Emperor Constantine, the controversy that caused the creation of the Nicene Creed, the fall of Constantinople and the wonderful Hagia Sofia church turned to mosque now museum. Episode 3 is a "best of" for the fir...