Books - Across the Centuries (Houghton Mifflin Social Studies)

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Across the Centuries (Houghton Mifflin Social Studies)

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Good even handed skim through several centuries
I was surprised to read the 1 star reviews.
Obviously they have neither read nor studied from this text.
I have used this text for two successive 7th graders. We all found it very readable, interesting and fair.

There is nothing about converting to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity or any other religion. The religious information is taught as part of understanding of the history of a particular time.

Also this is a middle school text and only refers to historically important aspects. So obviously neither the number of Muhammad's wives (one of the complaints) nor the number of slaves owned by George Washington were included (arguably more historically relevant).

If you truly want to know a little about World History, this is a good place to start.

Rating:

- biased book
Having looked over the information from an educators perspective, finding 200plus pages covering Islam and how to dress like a Muslim, what words to chant and the five fundamentals of Muslim, this book is very much biased to Muslim.
I do not recommend this book to young minds as they would be misinformed in regards to the information past on from this book.

Rating:

- Rates at an 11th grade reading level... for a 7th grade textbook!!
I am currently a college student in a class on reading in the content areas. In our class, we recently completed a textbook readability survey for this book (as well as several others) using the "Fry Readability Model." This model measures reading difficulty based on word syllables and sentence length. After evaluating three random passages in this book (from the beginning, middle, and end), this book rated at an 11th grade reading level. It was easily the largest disparity of all the books my class rated.

I just wanted to post this information because I found it to be very interesting, in a negative way (of course). If you are thinking of adopting this textbook for your class, please think twice. It is likely to be well over the heads of your average 7th grader.

Rating:

- Actually a very even-handed textbook
I have taught history to 7th graders in Washington using this text for 5 years. Yes, it covers the history of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Mesoamerica in addition to the usual Eurocentric view of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. As with all texts for middle grade students, it probably does not get into the "negatives" of any of these civilizations in depth. True, some of Mohammad's less savory practices are not discussed, but neither is the fact that thousands of children were virtually kidnapped during the Crusades to die on the front lines of losing battles in the Holy Land or that girls in China had their feet brutally bound to help keep them subservient. My only complaint about this very thorough text is that it is on too high a reading level for some of my struggling readers, although there are good supplemental materials to help with this.

Rating:

- Incredibly Interesting and Well-Writen w/ No Bias
I'm a 13 year old entering the 8th grade and having read the 8th, 7th, and 6th History book in this series I must say that for anyone of any age who is thouroughly interested in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, can enjoy this book beyond anything. It's the best basic text you could ever want to rely on. As a 13 year old who's primary vocation is to become a college professor of history I am truely begging you, even you're not interested in this particular section of historical events, to buy this book, because I beleive that if you read it, you will become interested.

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