Gombrich vs. Hillyer

[Iskra]

I just run across "A little history of the world" by Gombrich, for the very first time. I was wondering how it compares to "A Child's History of the World" by Hillyer since that is a book that I am familiar with.

Specifically, what ages is Gombrich's book for (Hillyer's is written for early elementary kids)?

Is the style of writing similar to Hillyer and if so in what way and how are the books different?

 

Thanks!

[PeterPan]

Gombrich is a higher reading level than Hillyer. Hillyer is utterly charming. Gombrich (audio version) put us to sleep. We were driving, so it was especially bad. :svengo:

 

I kept our audio copy on the chance my ds might enjoy it at some point.

[SailorMom]

I prefer Gombrich, but I have only read his books written for adults. I do think he presents a very balanced view, and seems to be less Western-centric than many other history writers.

[SilverMoon]

I enjoy Gombrich better for myself. CHOW is probably a better fit for early elementary though. It's written more like SOTW, and Little History is more condensed.

[Iskra]

Thanks for the input everyone!

[birchbark]

Yes, I would say Hillyer is for elementary/middle grades and Gombrich is for middle/high school. I think I prefer Gombrich myself. He has a fascinating, legend-type flavor to his accounts. It almost makes me think that's how C.S. Lewis would have written history. I find it enthralling, whereas Hillyer is more cutesy, storytime-like. Gombrich is also more sweeping and overviewish in his book. I think it makes a great introduction or review to world history, but less useful as a sole resource.

[2girls&amom]

Does anyone know the difference between the CHOW being sold on Rainbow Resource

 

http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Child%92s+History+of+the+World/010821

 

And this one sold on Amazon ?

 

http://www.amazon.com/Childs-History-World-V-Hillyer/dp/1607965321

 

The RR one has a 1997 copyright and was published 2010 (I think), while the one on Amazon was published Oct 2012. So is the Amazon one an even newer edition? I tried asking the customer service rep at RR but she didn't know either.

 

 

 

[serendipitous journey]

RE the OP -- Gombrich is more challenging writing, and there is much to recommend it (I esp. like the new, illustrated version) but I will say I was not happy with the presentation of Islam in Gombrich (as in, I found it unsympathetic). CHOW was preferable here, I thought.

[wingedradical]

I only discovered Gombrich last year. I have known Hillyard for ages.

 

I prefer Gombrich - I don't know how OhElizabeth's family found it boring! I think it is something you'd read to younger children whereas Hillyer can be read by many (although I think Calvert originally used it for 4th grade).

 

Because Gombrich was German, he focuses more on Holy Roman Empire and German states in certain places whereas Hillyer concentrates more on Britain in certain places. Gombrich was a Jew who converted to Christianity and his take on Christianity is interesting in places. My understanding is that he added the Muslim section when he did the second edition. He apparently also had a fascination with Islam and some, like the previous commenter, may find that his praise of Islam is a bit inconsistent with the rest of the book. I mean no disrespect to Muslim readers here -- it is just that the rest of the book is fairly evenhanded and suddenly, there is a chapter in which a culture seems to be elevated. Perhaps he was just making up for the fact that he left out so much about Muslim contributions in the first edition.

 

Hillyer had a much more romantic view of the people, cultures and frankly, of violence (except for the Islamic chapter, as mentioned earlier. Gombrich not so much.

 

You can listen to Gombrich for free at www.librivox.org. It is a bit inconvenient - each chapter is a file. Also, the narrators are non-professionals, but we've listened to a lot there, including Gombrich.

[Farrar]

I also found Gombrich's presentation of Islam very uneven. At times he was fair or even praising and at other times he was dismissive. I think it's Stripe who pointed out that Gombrich is really written for a secular-leaning Christian audience, which seems quite true to me. But I like LHOW overall. There are some lovely parts. And I agree that the new illustrated version is terrific.

[Iskra]

Can someone post a link to that new illustrated version of Gombrich?

[SarahW]

I believe it's this one with the blue on the cover. Samples are here: http://yalebooks.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/yale-announces-a-new-illustrated-edition-of-gombrichs-classic-a-little-history-of-the-world/

[Faithr]

I read LHOW out loud to my kids last year (ages 10 and 13) and we loved it. I really enjoyed it so much myself. No it is not perfect, but to me that just means stopping and discussing how we might have a slightly different take on things. But I have never not done that with any book. We tried Hillyer so many years and he flopped big time. I can't now remember why. . . .

 

Anyway, now I am really jealous of the new illustrated edition! I want that! How to justify this to myself when I have a perfectly good older edition and no one in the family actually needs the book. . . . wah!

[stripe]

I also found Gombrich's presentation of Islam very uneven. At times he was fair or even praising and at other times he was dismissive. I think it's Stripe who pointed out that Gombrich is really written for a secular-leaning Christian audience, which seems quite true to me. But I like LHOW overall. There are some lovely parts. And I agree that the new illustrated version is terrific.

We had several threads going about Gombrich a while back; some of the members had some interesting insights. Because he was apparently a secular Jew, but the book reads like it's for fairly nonreligious Christians (there was a line advising the readers to read the Bible one day, but then the chapter about Jesus suggests one feels a religious connection to him). I don't care for the chapter on Islam, either. It's not as patently offensive as some, but that's not saying much. But I love the first chapter of the book...the imagery captivated me and my kids! I haven't seen the illustrated version.

 

Serendipitous Journey has an interesting post in this thread

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/353483-a-little-history-of-the-world-eh-gombrich/

There are others, e.g.

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/100687-a-little-history-of-the-world-eh-gombrich-review/

And the posts around here

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/107994-your-secular-best-and-worst-for-grades-5-8/page__st__50#entry1014442

[Farrar]

We had several threads going about Gombrich a while back; some of the members had some interesting insights. Because he was apparently a secular Jew, but the book reads like it's for fairly nonreligious Christians (there was a line advising the readers to read the Bible one day, but then the chapter about Jesus suggests one feels a religious connection to him). I don't care for the chapter on Islam, either. It's not as patently offensive as some, but that's not saying much. But I love the first chapter of the book...the imagery captivated me and my kids! I haven't seen the illustrated version.

 

 

 

Yeah, the first chapter is one of the lovely parts. And I really like his descriptions of towns and growth in the Middle Ages - he really gets that movement right IMO whereas SOTW doesn't bother to cover it one bit. The part about the end of the Dark Ages and the metaphor about the "light" and the light being Christianity didn't jibe so well with me though, even though it's poetic.

[serendipitous journey]

stripe & farrarwilliams, your posts (and going over the old threads -- thank you, Stripe!) have reminded me why I like having more than one history "spine" lying around.

 

I'd honestly recommend having both, if one is a history person (that is, a homeschooler who takes ecumenical/secular history seriously and is sometimes dissatisfied by SOTW-level presentations). Using both for a given topic leads to a fairly even presentation and often one will pick up an important detail or nuance the other drops. CHOW give a much better presentation of Islam and the Prophet -- by much better I mean that it is one that a devout Muslim would not be (I think!) offended by, and which gives a non-Muslim child information about why Islam was, and is, a compelling religion; and what the Prophet's life was like and what he hoped to accomplish.

 

On the other hand, Gombrich's description of knights & castles does a much better job of hinting at the gritty realities: a child familiar with Gombrich is less likely to be shocked when she learns, in high school or college, that the chivalrous code included such oddities as: a landed woman traveling alone must not be harmed; a landed woman traveling in the company of a knight is essentially his property, and if one can defeat her knight she is the natural reward of this success.

 

Gombrich also has a chapter on Chinese history titled "The Enemy of History" and really I do think that understanding the eradication of alternate histories and the homogenization of culture in ancient China is an important insight, with implications for our modern world and for understanding political stabilization and dynastic/cultural control more generally.

 

Finally -- if you add to these the Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World I think you'd be pretty well set. The paragraph gives one example why, in perhaps tedious detail. ;)

 

When we hit SOTW2's description of the Crusades I was, being not esp. well-educated historically, completely befuddled. Re-reading it now, I think it is a horrid presentation. I shall not list the ways or y'all will get bored. However, I thought that the motives presented for the Christians were oddly trivial (no real sense of why they would suffer what they did for these wars) and the idea that Islam had spread like so much raspberry jam over North Africa and the Middle East* and then started to go mysteriously rotten ** -- none of this made sense to me. Esp. since I know that hospitality toward Jews and Christians had been important to the Muslims of this era (not that it always went perfectly). So I hunted 'round for a likely resource and got A Concise History of the Crusades from my library. Which explained not only the medieval Christian devotion to places & objects (read it for this -- an excellent overview), the political situation of the pope & landed aristocracy and the very real spiritual duties perceived by the Christian nobility, but also that the Arab Muslims who held Jerusalem were losing a struggle with Turkish Muslims. The Arab Muslims perceived a holy duty of tolerance, and under them Christians were secure. In fact, Christians of minority sects were much more secure than in the Holy Roman Empire, where they were persecuted. The Arab Muslims were politically organized and militarily disciplined, and they also benefited financially from Jewish and Christian pilgrimages. However, the Turkish Muslims fighting them perceived no such duty of tolerance, and were not politically unified nor disciplined in the same way, and so under their control Jerusalem became a very dangerous place with increasingly-common acts of violence and brutality targeting Christians and vandalism of Christian and Jewish holy sites. This is an important element in the beginning of the wars. The press of the Turkish Muslim army caused other difficulties that contributed to the Crusades -- they essentially abrogated the Arabic understanding that Constantinople should be left to the Byzantine empire, among other things. So rise of troubles with "Muslims" comes from the pressure of a particular group of Muslims with an ideology distinct from the Arab Muslims.

 

Okay -- the point is, in SOTW Bauer completely drops the ball here (I know she can't include everything -- well, this is something important that SOTW misses and so we need to supply it from other sources). Gombrich rather glosses the Crusades, but does not implicate the Muslims as being turncoat or evil. His telling errs on the side of making the Christians look a bit like bloodthirsty bullies. CHOW has done a solid job laying the ground for a better understanding of Islam & Arabic Islam, with two chapters previously describing the religion and the culture/technology, and explains that Christians had been going to Jerusalem for years & years when it was conquered by Muslim Turks who did not tolerate the pilgrims. But Kingfisher gives us this: "... Even after the Muslim Arabs conquered Palestine, pilgrims were free to come and go as they wished. But when the Seljuk Turks, who were also Muslim, invaded the land from central Asia, they persecuted the Christians." At 700-odd pages Kingfisher can afford to make these things clearer. If I'd had Kingfisher at the time (and remembered to look in it!) I'd have been able to teach this much more easily. OTOH Kingfisher is esp. dry reading for a 7yo.

 

so, not that the OP exactly asked, but that's my recommendation for a short list right now. I'll keep thread-reading and probably my short list will evolve!

 

 

* "But something has happened to the land around the Mediterranean. It isn't glowing yellow any more. Instead, it shines with a deep, clear scarlet. The entire Arabian peninsula is scarlet. So is the whole northern coast of Africa. Spain is scarlet, although the scarlet line stops at Tours, where Charles the Hammer stopped the Muslim army and turned it back. But the scarlet stretches up from Arabia all the way over to Jersusalem, on the coast of the Mediterranean. It stretches up to the Caspian Sea and over into India. This is the land that belongs to the Islamic empire -- now bigger than Rome's empire ever was." p 161.

 

** "The Christians were particularly upset when the rulers of the Islamic empire made it hard for them to visit the city of Jerusalem ... When the Islamic empire first took control of Jerusalem, Jews and Christians were allowed to visit the city. But then the Muslims in Jerusalem began to turn against Jewish and Christian pilgrims." p 162

[stripe]

Just a comment -- I bought a set of "Young People's Story of Our Heritage" by Hillyer and Huey, at the suggestion of Poke Salad Annie; it seems to be missing some of the language that strikes some people as rather "off." It is similar to CHOW, but has tons of graphics and photographs. Definitely not a compact, single volume, though. It has tons of photos/graphics. Because I no longer have CHOW, I can't tell if it's more detailed or longer in its descriptions. Sorry.

[tjlcc]

I'd honestly recommend having both, if one is a history person (that is, a homeschooler who takes ecumenical/secular history seriously and is sometimes dissatisfied by SOTW-level presentations). Using both for a given topic leads to a fairly even presentation and often one will pick up an important detail or nuance the other drops. CHOW give a much better presentation of Islam and the Prophet -- by much better I mean that it is one that a devout Muslim would not be (I think!) offended by, and which gives a non-Muslim child information about why Islam was, and is, a compelling religion; and what the Prophet's life was like and what he hoped to accomplish.

 

Agreeing with the bolded. We are using Hillyer as a read-aloud and Gombrich is on audio. If you only want one I would go with Gombrich on audio. I don't know about others, but I'm horrible at pronunciation.