Story of the World, Vol. 2: History for the Classical Child: The Middle Ages

We use this as our history curriculum in homeschool and the kids really enjoy it. It's written in a way that engages the reader and asks questions to involve them in the story telling. This book is part of a series and I would recommend them all. You can buy a corresponding course book to go along with it but it's not necessary. Highly recommend!!

Story of the World Volume 2 The Middle Ages "From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance" is authored by Susan Wise Bauer. She is a faculty member of the College of William and Mary, and co-author of "The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home."Story of the World Volume 2 The Middle Ages is the second volume of a four volume "Story of the World" book set. The book is divided into forty-two chapters which are comprised of the following:Introduction:Ch. 1 The Glory That Was RomeCh. 2 The Early Days of BritainCh. 3 Christianity Come to BritainCh. 4 The Byzantine EmpireCh. 5 The Medieval Indian EmpireCh. 6 The Rise of IslamCh. 7 Islam Becomes an EmpireCh. 8 The Great Dynasties of ChinaCh. 9 East of ChinaCh. 10 The Bottom of the WorldCh. 11 The Kingdom of the FranksCh. 12 The Islamic InvasionCh. 13 The Great Kings of FranceCh. 14 The Arrival of the NorsemenCh. 15 The First Kings of EnglandCh. 16 England After the ConquestCh. 17 Knights and SamuraiCh. 18 The Age of CrusadesCh. 19 A New Kind of KingCh. 20 The DiasporaCh. 21 The Mongols Devastate the EastCh. 22 Exploring the Mysterious EastCh. 23 The First RussiansCh. 24 The Ottoman EmpireCh. 25 The End of the WorldCh. 26 France and England at WarCh. 27 War for the English ThroneCh. 28 The Kingdoms of Spain and PortugalCh. 29 African KingdomsCh. 30 India Under the MoghulsCh. 31 Exploring New WorldsCh. 32 The American KingdomsCh. 33 Spain, Portugal and the New WorldCh. 34 Martin Luther's New IdeasCh. 35 The RenaissanceCh. 36 Reformation and Counter ReformationCh. 37 The New UniverseCh. 38 England's Greatest QueenCh. 39 England's Greatest PlaywrightCh. 40 New Ventures to the AmericasCh. 41 Explorations to the New WorldCh. 42 Empires CollideTo round out your history curriculum I would highly recommend purchasing the activity books and test packets which accompany each volume. These resources are available in either paperback or PDF-download.Based on our experience with this series and the content of the curriculum, I would recommend it for Grades 5-8. Overall we have been pleased with Ms. Bauer's approach to world history. To continue your study of World history, I would recommend Story of the World Volume 3 Early Modern Times "From Elizabeth to the First Forty-Niners."

I have been homeschooling my children for three years, and "Story of the World" is by far one of my favorite programs! The main text is wonderful, written in a very conversational style that is easy for children to understand, but includes many interesting facts that even adults may not know. Even my very young children love curling up on my lap as we pass the book around and my oldest child and I take turns reading the pages. Instead of being the dreaded subject that you might remember from your school days, History is a treat, and my children beg for us to read more.The main text alone would be a great resource, but combined with the activity and test books, this program is an absolute joy. I don't spend much time at all planning lessons, perhaps 30 minutes every weekend choosing worksheets and picking up library books to enrich our study. And for all this, it is priced quite low -- a steal for all the information that your children will be getting! It's also nice to be able to teach all of my children from one book, despite age differences, and many of the enrichment activities can be done or at least "assisted" by young children as well.I highly recommend this book!

I love this product! The best ride-along companion ever.

I have been using this series for homeschooling my children in history and I absolutely love it! I wanted to start from the beginning of history, going with a more classical approach, rather than starting with American history like most public schools do. The book presents history in a story form, making it much more engaging and easier to understand. The kids love reading through the book with me, and because of it, they retain a lot of the information. If you're looking for a history curriculum, then this is the one to buy!

PROS: Easy-to-read, fairly engaging, a good mix of history and folk stories, hits most of the big stuff. I like that it's mostly text with relatively few pictures. We supplement with DK publishing histories, which are less thorough and less-well organized, but have great pictures, so that the kids get a good sense of the look of things as well.CONS: Def. Western-centric (though less than some of its competitors), and def. focused more on wars/politicians/history of power, and not much at all on history of ideas, art, philosophy, etc. Due to the breadth of the survey, there's little material connecting what happens in one place and time to any other.Western-centric: Bauer includes lots of material on other cultures, it's true, but most of this is through the lens of Western history. Which is fair. And she does a much better job than most other material for this age group. If you use the book as a backbone rather than a sole resource, it should mostly work out anyway. I found it necessary to also buy a) a more completist survey that I use to supplement or contextualize when random non-Western countries show up in SOTW and b) a full-on history of China. Because Bauer has the kids so engaged with text, I found sources that were comics for these things: Cartoon History of the Universe Volumes 1-7 Gonick's History of the Universe/Modern World series and Jin Lui's Understanding China through Comics series https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Chinese-Civilization-Emperor-Understanding/dp/1611720273/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510679206&sr=1-1&keywords=jing+liu&dpID=61JZ4KwqoaL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srchChina has always been a tremendous power and has influenced much of history in that part of the world, so the terse coverage it receives in SOTW makes for some problems in giving children a more coherent idea of what happened almost anywhere East of Turkey.History of Ideas: I would love to see the author in future editions make a list of resources at the end of each chapter... suggested art, music, important thinkers, scientists, etc. These are things you see in other courses of course, but as the history series tends to be the backbone for the classical education, it would simplify teaching greatly to find a short list of suggested related topics right in the text. I'm getting pretty good at balancing multiple history book (music, art, philosophy) on my desk at the same time, but I would have love to see these things more incorporated. Or, maybe a secondary textbook on history of ideas and culture? I appreciate the trickiness of organizing such a tremendous amount of information, so perhaps that would be the way to go.

I've been homeschooling my children for 16 years, and was homeschooled as a child, as well. Throughout this journey, I have not seen a more fun and engaging history text for children than Story of the World. It flows like a story (which is how I believe history is best taught) and doesn't bog down in too many details. I believe it draws students in with the excitement of history and leaves them hungering for more.I do history with all of my children at the same time, so my current students are 5, 7, 10, and 15. They all enjoy these stories, and are able to see how history is not a disconnected, unrelated jumble of names and dates, but a fascinating story that continues to this day.We use this book as one of our "spines" and supplement with lots of other books to expand the narrative (as suggested in the Activity Guide in this series). I read aloud from this book (and series) almost daily. Highly recommended!

While this book is designed for younger elementary children, I believe it is more concisely thorough than most high school students will ever retain. I am using it for late elementary and middle school students who are captivated by the stories which springboard their interest into deeper reading. We are, of course, supplementing every few sections with an appropriate grade level novel. I love that "whole world" approach which skips back and forth between the major cultures at each time frame. Most sources overfocus on European World History and eliminate the co-existing and critically, historically important Islamic and Eastern cultures. I would venture to say that most adults do not have the unified historical threads keenly integrated. My "kids" are learning the basic flow of history with a high degree of retention using this curriculum with historical literature supplementation.I would skip the activity book due to philosophical concerns (which I have posted under the activity book listing) if it were not true that the maps and question review are very important.We did add Sherri Payne's Around the World in 180 Days geography program to this. We hopscotched through the continental studies as we encountered them in SOTW, even breaking down the "Define" and "Term" sections into specific areas of SOTW study. When the year of history was done, 99% of the geography course was done, as well. It fit together well. I think the kids appreciated the variety of dividing the continent sections up a bit over the year, rather than an exhaustive study all in one length time frame.

子供用の本ということで、シンプルな文章で書かれててとても読みやすいです。物語調で書かれているというのも、理解しやすい理由の１つだと思います。ただ、年代があまり書かれていないので、時間の流れは少し理解しづらいところがあります。

Comprei o livro para que meu filho pudesse praticar e o inglês e aprender um pouco sobre história medieval ao mesmo tempo. Tem funcionado maravilhosamente.

My son love it

Can’t sing the praises of this volume enough. Should be part of every primary education. The narrative style is interesting, with just enough detail.

We've been reading it for last couple of weeks. Perfectly written for the the target audience - children. We read ours in the car and it makes short work of long journeys and is genuinely interestingly written.