The History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK Big Ideas)

When you are ambitious enough to write a history book encompassing everything from 200,000 years ago until the present day, you must determine what to include and what to leave out. The author of "The History Book" concentrated on events that had the most impact on the development (or demise) of different civilizations throughout the world.I can't say enough about how the book was composed. Each section of the book lays out a timeline of dates and events covered during that period. Each event is then covered in a sub-section, which bullet points things that happened in history before and after the event being discussed. To achieve greater understanding with a minimum of words, diagrams are provided which detail how the event came to pass (using early humans as an example: "Foraging lifestyles rely on hunting/gathering" led to "Humans develop an intimate knowledge of animal and plant species" led to "Beliefs and practices emphasizing connectedness and communication start to develop" resulting in "The first examples of art, such as the cave paintings of Altamira, appear").The book is an easy read, giving just enough information to understand without overloading you with every little fact. Sub-sections are usually no more than a few pages, enabling the reader to be able to set the book down and easily pick it back up at a later time. The author also does a good job staying in the middle and not choosing sides during discussions on religion and political systems.I alternate between my Kindle Fire and Paperwhite. It was impossible to read the timelines on the Paperwhite; even though the Fire is only slightly bigger, it was enough to overcome the fine print, and I found I enjoyed the colored pictures and diagrams on the Fire as opposed to the black-and-white displays on the Paperwhite.Basically, this is a good reference book that will give you an interesting overview on major events in history.

I'm not a history major, nor am i someone who wants to dive deep in history of a particular period. But i've had so many questions, and lots of dots that I didn't know how to connects. This book was the answer. Concise and on point, this book helped me pretty much connect all the dots. Absolutely the best history books for those who are mostly interested in the big picture. I've purchased 4 more books in the series (Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, and religions book). They're all awesome books and are helping me fill all my knowledge gaps.

The strength of this book is in the layout and design of the content. Every heading and subheading pops to the eyes of the reader. Important and preceding events and effects are placed on the right of every historical event written in this book. It serves as a good primer for world history and a great study tool for the CSET Exam on Social Sciences. It's weakness lies in its bias towards some historical events coupled with its superficial explanation of those events.

Any person who wants to know the world history must read this. It succeeds in achieving its goal in the book title. It succinctly tells what we human beings have done throughout their time, across various places on the globe.You can even get more, if you read it along with a timetable of history (I have a book like this), or prepare your own one when reading it (which is what I did). You can visualise more on what really happened across the world at any point of history, and it’s subsequent impact.

I love these DK history books. They're easy reads of what adults should have learned long ago or refreshers on what we'd forgotten not long after we tested on the units in school. I've read several of them, gaining information, understanding and occasional insights with pieces of info that make sense of areas I never quite understood.

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Good as a quick reference book; but does not read easily. A lot of repeating of the same fact several times. Also, beware of personal interpretation of the authors, that are a reflection of popular media reporting at the time for representation of what they state took place, which is usually a liberal view of the situation.

Very well presented so it clearly shows how history in various parts of the world relates to the rest of the planet. This was always a clear shortcoming of history taught in the schools. We memorized dates and names but never were told how history in the Americas related to Asia or Africa. Well worth the time to study.