History The Definitive Visual Guide: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day Paperback – March 19, 2012

Very good

I had been wanting to purchase this book for awhile, but it was pretty costly. Prime Day alleviated that- at half off, I couldn't pass it up! It is a hefty volume- many thick pages, with lots of images and photos- yet easy to read. My husband (who is not a big reader) loves it, because he can sit down for 15 minutes and read and complete a section, similar to a magazine article. Not to say it's that simplistic, but it is not diving deeply into each historical event. It's giving the basics and then some incredibly interesting side tidbits with photos and sometimes timelines and drawings, which adds to the experience. It's not a literary history of civilization; it's something you could sit down with your pre-teen and read and discuss, and it would take up just enough time but not too much time. It would keep their interest, and they would learn something, without being bored, because it's colorful and glossy. It is a lovely book with a quality hard cover and thick pages. I'm really glad I finally purchased it. Highly recommend!

Did you ever want to know a little of everything... I love to have those fast fact tidbits to impress anyone but that's just me. "Oh, you want to bring up WW1... Did you know..."The illustrations are beautiful and the font is not too small like other history books of this size. Prepare a large space on your coffee table that people will open and act like they actually know what they are talking about. The majority of pages I've read so far are accurate and have a great overview of Ancient Rome and that is my fav. Learned a lot about various parts of history never taught in school.

I keep this book in the living room or by my bedside. It is an excellent text. The chapters are well written and cover a wide breadth of world history with very good illustrations , maps and photos. I read a good number of primary sources and textbooks about history and military history and this survey texts provides a strong overview of important periods, events and figures in history with illustrations and visual images which supplement the text. The authors write in a prose which is clear and sufficiently comprehensive and appropriate for a survey text. For a history fan, young (bright young person) or adult this text is very enjoyable to read and is well worth the price. Highly recommend it and I will be receiving a similar text (focused on American history from the same publisher in a similar format) from my spouse for the holidays. This book is heavy (weight), but again, I read it regularly.

In the DK Smithsonian publications you get an awful lot of book for the money. History is no exception even at its $50 asking price. I love all that's in this large (12"x10") 620 page book. It has a little bit of everything. Lets start with the massive number of beautiful photos and illustrations. It doesn't stop there. Timelines, influential figures, famous battles, discoveries, philosophies, political movements and so much more are also covered. As an overview how can you not like this book?

This is a good book, nice illustrations, concise descriptions of mostly relevant events in human history. Like every history book that tries to compress millions of years of human history in a single volume, not everyone will agree on the attention given to each subject, too little, too much or nothing at all.I bought this 4 years ago, and so far I just read the subjects that interest me. With the on-going pandemic I thought I'd pick it up again a see what the book says over the 1918 pandemic.In the timeline for the period 1914-present there's one picture of cops in Seattle wearing mask at the height of the pandemic, no description, just a small picture.On page 467, under the chapter "World Health", there's this one sentence: "Just after World War I, a pandemic of "Spanish flu" (influenza) killed up to 50 million people - more than the war itself."That's it, no other mention or short description of the 1918 pandemic can be found in the whole book.The book devoted 2 whole pages on Isabella of Castile, who of course was an important historical figure. But one sentence for an event where 50 to 100, maybe 150 million died, really?I'm sure a lot of world history books whose revised volumes were written this year will include a little more than one sentence over the 1918 pandemic.

Obviously, world history is a pretty big topic for just one book but this particular book gives you a lot of bang for your buck. You get to look at so many artifacts up close and personal and in fabulous color. It's like having a museum at your house.