The Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World: 40,000 B.C. to Present Day

I thought I was purchasing the full 761pp Kingfisher History, as listed. What I received was a ~100pp volume of only the Medieval period. Very disappointing. TB ought to separate the single-volume listings from the complete History.

It was listed at 761 pages. The book I got is less than 100 pages. It only covers the years 1601-1707. It was $18. Not at all what I was expecting.

So happy to have this book. It's a great companion to our Story Of the World curriculum. Shipping was super fast too!

I read this history encyclopedia from beginning to the end; took 2 weeks, an hour a day, in preparation for homeschooling my son. It's about 5th grade level, good descriptions, excellent pictures, covers every corner of the globe. It's a big, thick book and worth the money. I plan on having my son read 2 pages a day and finish it in a year. I can then supplement any information he wishes to know more. Doesn't cover any event in deep detail, but gives excellent overall impression of the history of the whole world. Even I learned a lot! Highly recommended in addition to other more in depth history studies.

This is a wonderful book, and I am so disgusted with Kingfisher for letting it go out-of-print, and for replacing it with the much lesser "red book." We homeschool and find this book invaluable! We learned of this book by reading a book I highly recommend: "The Well-Trained Mind, A Guide to a Classical Education at Home" by Wise. We feel badly for all of the parents still searching for this book. Kingfisher told me that they had about 200 in their warehouse, sold me two of them, and told me that other homeschooling parents could contact them to buy copies. Now that source suddenly dried up, and I wonder why. I have stopped buying all Kingfisher books until they reprint this one, and close out the 'red book.'

This is *the* best history book to have for all your child's years from first grade through high school. He's not going to grow out of this book. A specific event or narrow time period is presented on each two-page spread in the book along with many, many helpful colorful drawings. Along each left and right side edge all through the book, however, is an extremely helpful world-wide timeline about everything else going on during the time of these two pages. This is a very informative and riveting "children's" history book. We try and keep it by our reading chair so that with every book we read, the kids and I can find the same time period in this history book. I say "try" to keep it by our reading chair because my kids are always flopping down on the family room floor with it or taking it to the kitchen table to read through it on their own time. It's really that good of a book. It's out of print for now, but make sure to find a used copy so you can have this gem for your kids.

Learning Family Book ReviewIf you could only have one history book in your home library, this should be it. Written like an encyclopedia of historical events, the Illustrated History is an incredibly easy to access work, covering almost any historical even you could imagine. The illustrations and photos are excellent. The text is brief, but enough to get a basic understanding. I've begun using this one as a first source for history subjects, to get myself oriented, then continue into more specialised books as needed. The chronolgy is listed in the outside column of the pages, which makes thumbing through it quite easy. Though it isn't a history course in one volume, all of the more major events in history have several pages devoted to them covering archaeological data, social background, art and more. An outstanding book.