Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Told in a straightforward, engaging style that has become Susan Wise Bauer's trademark, The Story of the World series covers the sweep of human history from ancient times until the present. Africa, China, Europe, the Americas—find out what happened all around the world in long-ago times. This first revised volume begins with the earliest nomads and ends with the last Roman emperor. Newly revised and updated, The Story of the World, Volume 1 includes maps, a new timeline, more illustrations, and additional parental aids.

This read-aloud series is designed for parents to share with elementary-school children. Enjoy it together and introduce your child to the marvelous story of the world's civilizations.

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Customer Reviews

Average Customer Rating:

PLEASE view ALL 1-starred reviews before making your purchase

Customer Rating:

I would not have bothered to write a review of this book for there are many 1-starred reviews here already and many have made very good arguments against this book (if only I had read those before purchasing). However, I feel compelled to add one more negative review because I feel the need to balance out the positive 5 star reviews. This book makes me question Ms. Bauer's Well-Trained Mind and whether I should reconsider using her materials in my homeschool curriculum.

Homeschool material	Customer Rating:
Excellent material. I really like how this material is designed to to cycle through over three times during a child's homeschool experience in grades K-12.

This book will make your child LOVE History

Customer Rating:

My 1st grader and even my 5th grader absolutely LOVE this book. While some of the material is advanced for my 1st grader, it is written in a way that he can still comprehend the general idea. I also purchased the workbook that accompanies this book and it is filled with lots of very informative teaching guides and tear-out pages for my child to color. My 5th grader has another book on History of Western Civilization and he comes in and listens while I teach from this book as it explains events in a much more indepth way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, but also highly recommend that you purchase the accompanying workbook. Many thanks to the author!

The best program I've seen for teaching history

Customer Rating:

We are finishing the last of the four books in this series, and I've looked at many, many other alternatives for teaching history now that it's time to start again. After 5 years of homeschooling my 8 kids and researching nearly everything out there, I can honestly say these are the BEST books for teaching history. No, it's not perfect (what is?), but it is still WONDERFUL! Naturally, not everything can be covered. Of course there are a few mistakes (as in every singly history program I've looked at for our family, including a few college texts), and yes the last book "Modern Times" focuses a lot on wars and skips over other important events like the San Francisco fire, and book 3 didn't address large settling movements, like the Mormons trekking to Utah, etc. But for gaps I simply get library books, take a day off of reading these books, and supplement as I see fit. And that's what Susan Wise Bauer has RECOMMENDED: supplement as you see your children need. This still is the BEST program out there, and I'm thrilled to begin the cycle again. Our family has had lively discussions about events in history; how many families can enjoy that? My 14 year-old is looking forward to making sand and glue pyramids again, this time with his 8 year-old brother. Even though I have a graduate degree in humanities, I learned more about history through this series than I ever did in 6 years of college.

Inaccurate and sloppy.

Customer Rating:

I bought this book because I had read the reviews here and I needed a history book to add to a homeschooling curriculum. I received it and as I was browsing the pages I focused on the ancient Greece pages, as I am originally from Greece. To my horror, the first inaccuracy was a perpetuated one that Alexander the Great was not greek. I let this slide because I know there has been a huge propaganda about this and the author may have bought on that. Then, I read about the Olympics and how they got their name from mount Olympus. This is again a common misconception, but the Olympics got their name from the ancient city of Olympia and any person who writes a history book should at least know that. Needless to say, we will not be using this book. I want my son to learn about other ancient civilizations but we will do it with a book whose author took actual time to research history. And I wholeheartedly agree with the people who complained of the sloppy and simplistic feeling of the book. My son is in 2nd grade and I can see how he would be bored with the texts in this book. They are not cohesive and things are mentioned in a haphazard way, definitely not a book I would recommend for homeschooling.