I signed up to review The History of the Medieval World, partly because I remember my professor at Houghton College pointing out that while Western Civilization books start out with maps of the Mediterranean, then shift to Europe, it’s not as if the rest of the world stopped doing interesting things, in fact, people living around the Mediterranean would have thought, "Europe? Why do you want to see a map of Europe?" I was curious about Persia, India, and China, and any other bits of the map I’d never read about.
There was a lot of stuff happening in those bits of the maps! So much was happening that I was glad Dr Bauer includes reviews of dynasties and little time lines to help keep the various cultures straight in my head from one chapter to the next.
I imagine a homeschooling family buying "The History of the Medieval World" as a text book for an older student, or as a reference book for the adults of the family not wishing to be totally dependent on their children’s text books for history knowledge. (History, grammar, handwriting and spelling have been the biggies I’ve had to learn with my children, what are yours?)
I want clear maps, a thorough index, clear table of contents, lots of white space and good type set in a reference book. If the subject is unfamiliar, I don’t want to trip over the presentation. "The History of the Medieval World" ( at least in it’s electronic form) is beautiful. I also want the text to be engaging, well researched, and honest about what parts the author is sure of, and what parts she’s piecing together from sources who disliked one another. Dr Bauer comes through on all of those counts plus B was often reading over my shoulder. If he likes it, you know it’s not onerous or boring to read.
Here are some quotes from page 58 in a chapter on the Emperor Theodosius’s troubles with the church:
for he imagined that all would be brought to oneness of opinion, if a free discussion were entered into, concerning ambiguous points of doctrine…This was wildly optimistic, and as anyone who has ever been involved in church work could predict, it didn’t work…Theodosius was finding that it was easier to announce unity than to actually create it. In many ways the Goths were easier to deal with than the heretics; all he had to do was kill them.
With that wee bit of humor and connection to familiar life, you can see why B wants a copy.