LITTLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD: ILLUSTRATED EDITION

Must've read for kids. .but adults must read it before you ask kids. .

Could have been much better

My 8-year-old daughter and I started reading this as a library book, the version with no illustrations. We liked it so much, we bought the illustrated version. The 40 chapters are short and digestible. According to the preface, the author "was convinced that it should be perfectly possible to explain most things to an intelligent child without jargon or pompous language." It does not talk down to children. The content is streamlined, not too deep or detailed but still with lots of information which may inspire you to do further research on a topic (like where did Hannibal get those elephants?). Finally the storytelling is great, making it very accessible for young people. You feel like grandpa is telling you a story. I would even suggest it to people of any age who would like a nice light read of history. My daughter liked some chapters so much, we read some of them 2 or 3 times in a row... Every book on history has its emphases and bias, so its helpful to know these in advance. This book was intended for central European children. For example, he assumes the child is familiar with the swallow, and explains the location of Egypt as where this swallow flies in the winter time. There is more focus on European history than the rest of the world, although it still has chapters on India, Buddism, Islam, and China. It places more weight on ancient and classical times. At the halfway point, you are still at around 1100 AD. It is great through the 19th century. It would probably be better to find another source for the 20th century, although there are still 2 chapters covering it. I highly recommend the illustrated version over the non-illustrated version. The author is more famous for the classic art history book, "The Story of Art", so as you might expect, most of the illustrations in "A Little History" are artwork contemporary with the period being described, in glorious color on high quality paper. They are fantastic. Its almost like having an art book and a history book in one edition. In fact, I think I'll will put this side by side with my Story of Art, on the bookshelf, and even look at one while reading the other. I originally found this book by looking for a good history book for my daughter. I looked at the DK offerings and others. Those often have issues with dumbed down content or language, sound-byte style presentation of content, outright factual errors, cartoon-style illustrations. There is such a huge gulf between those books and this book in terms of quality, I can't even find the words to express it. I honestly think every house should have this book on a bookshelf.

A must read at any age.

Very lively reading. Gombrich is known for art history but this book is up to par. Great fir children starting six years old.

子供向けに良いです。 おすすめ致します。

I originally got this book for my young niece, but once I started reading, it was hard to tear myself away. In contrast to a typical "dry" history book with facts and dates, this book's style was extremely engaging. Gombrich did not shy away from using the first person and second person, and that made the style feel very interactive. For example, the section on Alexander the Great included, "His commands could now be said to reach all the way from the Nile to Samarkand. This would probably have been enough for you or me, but Alexander was far from satisfied." More importantly, Gombrich liberally inserts his own unique interpretations of the key takeaways, which add to the charm and coherence of the book. I loved that the book interprets rather than just relates. For example, he concluded his Bronze Age section with, "They were people just like us. Often unkind to one another. Often cruel and deceitful. Sadly, so are we. But even then a mother might sacrifice her life for her child and friends might die for each other. No more and no less than often than people do today." This also illustrates the author's ability to relate ancient events and people to modern people and current practices. In fact, what amazed me about the style is that it managed to be conversational and dynamic but the author was still able to seamlessly integrate profound observations and sweeping statements. One of my favorite sentences was the description of the Spartans and the Athenians: "Knowing how to die like that isn't easy. But knowing how to live is, perhaps, even harder." Nonetheless, the grand generalizations were balanced by carefully selected details which made the history come to life. Also, even though a lot necessarily had to be left out for this to be a "little" history, the details that were put in seemed just right. Although there are many examples of these, I particularly liked the story included in the Alexander section which related how Alexander went to see the philosopher Diogenes and was so impressed that he said " ` If I weren't Alexander I should like to be Diogenes. ` " In addition, the writing had a subtle sense of humor that made me smile as I read certain parts. Another great thing about the book is the organization. It is split up into forty relatively short chapters, and even the chapter titles seem well thought out and incorporate a touch of poetry. Each chapter starts with some creative introduction to get the reader interested in the topic, but seems to come full circle at the end. The chapters seamlessly build on top of one another and the book felt very well integrated. I was also impressed by the way Gombrich would smoothly shift into the point of view of whatever people he was discussing while not hesitating to criticize them where needed. It felt like he really made a lot of effort to consider different perspectives and show multiple sides to each story. Finally, it would be impossible to complete a review of the book without noting the attractiveness of the book itself. The relatively "squarish" shape of the pages, the interesting effect of the half-cover in the front, the glossy paper, the fonts, and the frequent illustrations gave the book a very luxurious feel and amplified the pleasure of reading. I also greatly enjoyed the illustrative maps. While I suppose it could be said that the book was not entirely objective, may contain a few factual inaccuracies, leaves a lot out, and gives a disproportionate amount of attention to European history, I feel that none of these are really relevant criticisms of this particular book. The lack of complete objectivity added to the charm of the book. I'm sure the engaging style of the book more than outweighs any mistakes in detail or omissions as it makes the topic so interesting that it really encourages readers to research the topics in more depth. And while I believe the argument that a balanced view of history beyond European history is important for people to have, this particular book was clearly told from Gombrich's perspective and he did a great job covering the areas he did focus on.