This revision of All Through the Ages was the most extensive update we have ever made to a book so far. What we changed:
1) The ancient world timelines now completely agree with Ussher’s’ (Annals) and Floyd Jones’ (Chronology of the Old Testament) dates, the most biblically accurate dating scholarship available. The ancient world timelines have also been updated with the history information which I have learned from Jacob Bryant (An Analysis of Ancient Mythology) and Ruth Beechick’s call for a return to biblical authority in history (her conclusions in World History Made Simple: Matching History with the Bible are similar to mine in Story of the Ancient World).
2) Of course, all the new books recommended from all the various homeschooling catalogs we indexed up to and including this spring’s latest catalogs have been included; along side their old recommendations (even though they might not be available new and in their catalogs anymore because of that, they were still excellent books, and many of them can be found in libraries or online).
3) Many smaller and independent publishers are republishing the the best of the great old books indexed by The Best Historical Novels and Tales and History of Nations recommended reading lists (sources for books indexed in All Through the Ages); a search for them on Amazon.com will bring them up available for purchase again. These have been retained in the 3rd edition of All Through the Ages. However, some of those titles were just too obscure, and unavailable to us in our day. Those titles have been removed, greatly streamlining several of the lists.
4) Corrections were made throughout all the lists where errors were found for incorrect reading levels, authors, titles, etc. and checked against several library databases as well as Amazon.com.
5) Book descriptions were greatly expanded in every list, in every level; and changed, where necessary, to make the descriptions even more accurate and helpful.
6) While every list in the Chronological section was expanded, the Geographical section was massively expanded; many of the country lists are quite complete now across all reading levels and for all book types (history, biography, historical fiction, literature, etc.). The Geographical section of the book is now nearly as extensive as the Chronological section, and should be a great help in Geography studies.
7) A few new articles and sidebars were added to aid understanding of more complex, confusing, or controversial events in history.
8) And finally, the book has been completely retypecast in a darker and easier to read (I think) font, at a larger size. More space was added between entries to increase legibility. The page design has been redone, all with an eye to increase legibility and ease of use. Yes, these changes added pages to the book, but we were committed to greatly increase the ease of use, relevancy, and legibility of All Through the Ages, even if it meant an increase in cost for us, without passing those increases on to the homeschooling community. Times are tough right now, and we have been there, trying to come up with hundreds of dollars for books while living on one income; we think homeschooling families deserve more help in tough times, not less. So not raising our prices is our little bitty way of helping out. 🙂
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