Book Review - The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History by Jane Bingham (2011 Edition)

The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History by Jane Bingham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


See my review on amazon for a complete table of contents.

I love the Usborne series of encyclopedias and other books, and was really excited to add this to our home's repertoire.

While there is not a lot of depth on some areas/topics (Ancient China and Japan, for instance), there is certainly a huge breadth of knowledge. I am excited that there are 100 pages dedicated to prehistory, including the birth of our planet and the beginnings of life. There is a really cool visual timeline of prehistory (kind of a mini Charlie's Playhouse Giant Evolution Timeline: Book & Play Mat, "Time Charts" for ancient, Medieval, and Modern history, and the "past 500 years" section includes mini topical sections on topics such as the cold war; cinema, radio, and tv; Christianity; and computers. The running timeline across the bottom of each page indicates both the era in history and the geographic area being discussed on those pages.

While I'm happy this book approaches prehistory from a scientific standpoint, I'm not thrilled about its handling of religion. It not only uses the outdated dating system of BC/AD (rather than BCE/CE), but it presents Christian mythology as fact while keeping other religions firmly at arm's length when discussing them. The Old Testament of the Bible is referenced as a place to read about the history of the Hebrews, and Jesus is definitively presented as a historical figure. The book suggests reading the Bible's New Testament to learn more about him and his works, which lends that book a certain historical credence it may not deserve. Other religions are not treated with the same hand, but their beliefs are clearly defined as just that - beliefs. It seems that throughout this "history" book, Christianity and its conquests are glorified, while everyone else is a footnote (in the index, Christianity gets 34 entries, Islam gets 3 (though Muslims get 18), Buddhism gets 6, Hindus get 7, and pagans get 4 (all bad)).

This bias is extremely disappointing in such a well-respected series. Luckily, my kids are still young enough to be read to, and I can orally edit and explain as necessary until they're old enough to read it on their own and understand the distinctions.

As for Internet-links, it looks like there aren't actually any links IN the book; rather, each section refers you to the Usborne quick-links web site, where you can search by page number for relevant links. This seems like kind of a pain at first, but if you think about it, it allows Usborne to constantly monitor the links and be sure they are up-to-date and accurate, rather than having in print links which may be expired and/or no longer relevant. They also claim to add new relevant links as they become available.

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Year in Books

I read 48 books this year, not including children's books. This is pretty impressive to me, considering I spent 2 semesters studying pre-calculus, among other subjects.

• 15 of those books were read on my nook, which spent only 2-3 months in commission (my jumpy toddler broke it... twice).  
• Only 2 of last year's books were what I would call "classics," though even those are modern classics (Slaughterhouse Five and Contact). I think this year's list will be much smaller, since I'm trying to tackle some real classics like Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, possibly Virgil's Aenid, and some other heavy stuff. We'll see, I may tire of it and switch back to my good old standby, YA.
• 28 books I read last year were YA. 
• 11 were re-reads, and I'll probably do that again this year with a few books. There are just some books you have to read every couple of years, you know?  
• Only 6 of 48 books were NOT part of a larger series, though some of the series (serieses? How the hell do you pluralize that word?) have only one book thus far.
• Nook stuff I already own & would like to read this year:
• The Odyssey (currently reading)
• The Iliad
• Dracula
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Relativity: The Special and General Theory
• How Children Learn
• Raising Freethinkers
• Anna Karenina

I plan to purchase and read Zenschooling, and I just found out that the second in Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles series is coming out in May. I'll be buying and reading that in one day, I'm sure.

Last year, I sorted through the NYT's "must read books of the last year" and added a bunch.... which I never read. I think I'll be lucky to make it through the list I already have while studying Calculus and recovering from birth, but do you have any suggestions for me? Take a look at my to-read shelf (this includes all the books I want to read with the kids, so it's long) and tell me if anything jumps out that should go to the top of the list!

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I've been reading Homer's Odyssey, and am fascinated on many levels. One is the style. A couple of years ago, I started a self-study Old Testament course (which I never finished, because I fail at not having deadlines), and one of the first discussions was the context in which it was written. The Odyssey had a similar introduction, explaining the oral nature of Homer's time, how the oral story would have been passed down through generations, changing each time to fit the bard's audience, and ultimately would have come to be put into print. As I read, I hear so many stylistic similarities to the Bible, in terms of repeated phrases, two alternate versions of the same story-within-a-story told a few paragraphs apart, and so forth. It's obvious that these tales were composed (at least in written form) in a similar timeframe, and it is just really interesting to me how differently they are now perceived, one being viewed as pure mythology and the other as absolute truth.