Susan Wise BauerBesprekingen

These books are good for what they do. And I learned that the Alamo is in San Antonio. I wonder where I used to think it was located.

These serve a purpose. The most important is the excursions into geography and lots of it. But aside from the geography, I can not enjoy it.

This book is basically a history and culture textbook written for homeschoolers who are short on time and culture and need to get everything from just one book. It has to simplify and shorten, to be accessible to children. In its three pages on Alcibiades, it goes too far and actually misleads; every other sentence is completely false. What did the same author do with Alcibiades in her history for adults? I'm actually curious now.

I tried listening to the book, instead of reading. It seems to go really awry with most of Greek history. Its big virtue is that it goes around and around the world, picking up the threads on one continent after another.

The focus on great books and rigorous academics is so tempting to this ISTJ. But at the end of the day, there is not really enough room in this program for the average student to develop a love of learning. Even to me - someone who really loves reading, writing, and learning in general - the emphasis on those aspects of education sounded so incredibly boring! I would want for my students to get outside of the house and have actual experiences more often.

The model here would be great for those kids who excel in language naturally. They may very well like all the reading and writing that is required. For anyone who struggles with these skills, the program will frustrate and discourage, rather than inspire them to keep going. If a student is considering a trade school, or is questioning whether they need to go to college at all, the classical education as it's presented here is simply not likely to be the best option.

The authors state that the book is just a guide, and aspects can be tweaked for your particular children, but then in other sections, they list certain "musts" and such - the tone overall tends to lean toward a strict curriculum.

There is some great information within these pages, however! There are tons of resources, gathered all into one place, guides to what children should know at certain grade levels, and even some good thoughts. Although, the book is pretty repetitive - it could have been condensed quite a bit!

Grammar Stage (Grades 1-4)

"Young children are described as sponges because they soak up knowledge. But there's another side to the metaphor. Squeeze a dry sponge and nothing comes out. First the sponge has to be filled." pp 21-22

Logic Stage (Grades 5-8)

"The middle-grade student still absorbs information. But instead of passively accepting this information, she'll be interacting with it - deciding on its values, its purpose, and its place in the scheme of knowledge." p 231

Rhetoric Stage (Grades 9-12)

"Rhetoric is the art of expression... Since self-expression is one of the greatest desires of adolescence, high school students should have training in the skills of rhetoric so that they can say, clearly and convincingly, what's on their minds. Without these skills, the desire for self-expression is frustrated." p 465

If you are wanting a good, concise, readable history of the ancient world to Constantine, I have not found a better volume than this.

With DVDs

What terrible secret was buried in Shi Huangdi's tomb? Did nomads like lizard stew? What happened to Anansi the Spider in the Village of the Plantains? And how did a six-year-old become the last emperor of Rome?

Told in a straightforward, engaging style that has become Susan Wise Bauer's trademark, The Story of the World series covers the sweep of human history from ancient times until the present. Africa, China, Europe, the Americas--find out what happened all around the world in long-ago times. This first revised volume begins with the earliest nomads and ends with the last Roman emperor. Newly revised and updated, The Story of the World, Volume 1 includes maps, a new timeline, more illustrations, and additional parental aids. This read-aloud series is designed for parents to share with elementary-school children. Enjoy it together and introduce your child to the marvelous story of the world's civilizations.

Trying to pick up some tips to make my reading deeper. Picked up a few tips, but I have decided that I read mostly for pleasure. I might revisit when I am in a different mind frame.

Reading the cover I thought the book would focus on European History but was delightfully surprised when the narrative veered into early Chinese and Indian History and other locales. One forgets that instability was a global trait during the Middle Ages.

A great book and a great introduction to early history.

Nice little vignettes.

As always when I read about being a better reader I am—at least temporarily—inspired to practice what I read.

In The Well-Educated Mind Wise Bauer has two aims. One is to educate the reader on how to read more effectively. The other is to present a reading course which, if followed, would lead to someone having a sound foundation for different types of writing. The strength of this book comes in the intersection of those two themes. After discussing general strategies for reading effectively, each chapter of the book covers a particular type of reading (the novel, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science) and applies those strategies to the topic at hand. This is important because how one effectively reads, for example, poetry differs markedly from how one effectively reads drama.

This structure gives rise to the main weakness of this book. The chapters in part II are repetitive in structure. A brief definition of the area is followed by a history of writing in that area. This is followed by a detailed and somewhat repetitive overview of how to read works of that type and an annotated list of some foundational works. Like in many books which straddle the line between a reference work and a non-reference read, the structure allows each chapter to stand alone although it makes the book a less compelling read.

The heart of the model that Wise Bauer proposes is not novel but it is worth reviewing. Effective reading is not a matter of a particular note taking format (although she has some lightweight suggestions). It is a matter of organizing your reading into multiple stages: First, read for understanding. Make sure you understand what the author is saying and how they are saying it. Second, analyze the work. Evaluate what the author says and fit it into a broader framework of knowledge. What are the conclusions the author makes? Third, react to the work. Ultimately, do you agree or disagree with these conclusions? The specific questions a reader asks at each stage will vary with the type of work, but the stages are always the same. Note that this does not require reading the book three times, although for sufficiently deep works, this may be ideal. However, it does require thinking about the book multiple times.

A quick note on the annotated list of works. They are organized by the type of writing they are. This is an intentional decision because Wise Bauer's goal in organizing them is to give the reader a sense of that type of writing. These works could also be valuably organized by topic (black experience in America and Christianity being two that come up frequently throughout the lists). That would be a useful but different way of experiencing them. The annotations also contain useful notes on which translations are best which is useful, especially for older works with less accurate translations floating around. In the end, I mostly skimmed the annotations, figuring I would come back to them if I were to go through one of the reading sequences.

Although I think the discipline required to fully implement an approach like this is impractical to apply all the time, I do think that it is incredibly valuable to understand the reading process through these stages. Even if I, as a reader, only go through a lightweight version of this process, explicitly separating the process of understanding, evaluating, and reacting to a work will help me be a better reader and, I can hope, limit the degree to which I make mistakes of reacting to what I think a work says rather than what it actually says.

Ljúft sagnfræðirit sem segir sögu helstu ríkja heimsins í öllum heimsálfum. Bauer tengir vel saman áhrif trúarbragða við stjórnmál og hvernig margir höfðingjar nýttu sér trúnna til að bæði ná völdum og sameina íbúana að baki sér. Það er ekki síður áberandi á þessu tímabili hve trúin gat orðið öflugt vald hvort sem menn voru sanntrúaðir eður ei. Einn af kostum ritsins er líka að sjá og bera saman t.d. hvað var að gerast í Kína á meðan Islamistar klofnuðu og börðust hver við annan.

I am finally finished with this incredibly detailed recital of the ancient world, with all its mayhem. Billed as covering the facts from 'the earliest accounts' to the fall of Rome, it tells with relentless detail the stories of war, fratricide, patricide, matricide, and all matter of disaster as people chased after power. Bauer moves from Mesopotamia (and myths thereof) to China, back to the Mediterranean, over and over to keep us on an approximately even timeline, but the stories are depressingly the same. I am sure there is more to plumb in the history of our species than this lust for control, but it's not reflected here.

The audio voice is plummy, which is sufficiently soporific that I could only really listen when I was walking or traveling. Once the narrative got to the era reflected in stories of Egypt, Palestine, Greece and Rome, where I have more grounding, the names stopped blurring together. I suspect (or hope) the printed version has maps which might aid the reader - once in a while I resorted to Google and Wikipedia to show me the geography discussed.

All in all, a traditional overview of inferred and recorded time in Asia, Europe and North Africa.

I may look again later. I am more drawn to her broad coverage of history books and will go back to them.

guide to critical reading of various genre with annotated reading list

Read the opening part and preamble to the fiction list -- going to start on the fiction list w/ Don Quixote in the fall.

This book provides a well-written, interesting and informative assessment of the American school system, how children do not necessarily fit into this system, how parents can help their children better deal with the school system, or by "flexing" the existing system to better accommodate their children. This book offers a great deal of practical advice in a situation where homeschooling is not an option and where the child does not fit into the school system. I recommend this book to every parent that has a child still stuck in the current education system.

I read Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" a few months ago and decided to see if Susan Wise Bauer had anything else to say on the matter, so picked up this book. The Well-Educated Mind is a how-to guide for reading books the way an academic scholar would, i.e by making use of the trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric. The second section of the book provides a list of recommended texts in five categories (novels, autobiography, history, drama and poetry, and history of science).

Both these book compliment each other, but the Adler book is more comprehensive and detailed. However, unlike Adler, Bauer doesn't assume you already know how to read a book and gives some direction on the mechanics of reading a book (how to move your eyes and remedial reading and vocabulary help). There are some differences between the method as provided by Bauer and that of Adler, so it is a case of determining which method works better for the reader. I was also disappointed by the lack of attention Bauer gives to scientific reading material. She covers the history of science in a superficial manner, but generally ignores other scientific works.

I read this book as the organizing preamble to a meetup book group. In that capacity, it was a pretty useful guide. After all, how many book groups have you been to that devolve into gab fests for people who eventually don't even bother to read the book and focus solely on the pot luck portion of the occasion? So, stars for the idea behind the book and for encouraging people to focus on the tools necessary for reading a text closely and studying without a professional guide.

That's where the stars end, however. Susan Wise Bauer comes off as a sort of arrogant, evangelical, anti-education, yutz. Eventually, the condescension comes to a head and you just want to put the book down and flip her off. Look, if you didn't go to college and for whatever reason (there are many) you can't go to college, the ideas in this book (there are like 3 solid ideas that take about as many pages to explain) are useful. It's worthwhile to gain the confidence that you are reading "correctly." For everyone else, even those of us who had a pretty good high school education, there is absolutely nothing of value here. You get a few obvious points about reading carefully, then you get her strange and often questionable list of books to read (Mein Kampf? Really? Of all the books to choose from? Was that important?). The majority of the pages are dedicated to horribly reductive synopses of her list of book.

Also there's no index, or pages listing her recommended reading lists by title only. You pretty much have to slog through her pages of commentary to see which books in each category of literature you would like to read. No thanks.

Overall, I would NOT recommend this book, though there may be some cases when parts of it are useful.

I read this book as the organizing preamble to a meetup book group. In that capacity, it was a pretty useful guide. After all, how many book groups have you been to that devolve into gab fests for people who eventually don't even bother to read the book and focus solely on the pot luck portion of the occasion? So, stars for the idea behind the book and for encouraging people to focus on the tools necessary for reading a text closely and studying without a professional guide.

That's where the stars end, however. Susan Wise Bauer comes off as a sort of arrogant, evangelical, anti-education, yutz. Eventually, the condescension comes to a head and you just want to put the book down and flip her off. Look, if you didn't go to college and for whatever reason (there are many) you can't go to college, the ideas in this book (there are like 3 solid ideas that take about as many pages to explain) are useful. It's worthwhile to gain the confidence that you are reading "correctly." For everyone else, even those of us who had a pretty good high school education, there is absolutely nothing of value here. You get a few obvious points about reading carefully, then you get her strange and often questionable list of books to read (Mein Kampf? Really? Of all the books to choose from? Was that important?). The majority of the pages are dedicated to horribly reductive synopses of her list of book.

Also there's no index, or pages listing her recommended reading lists by title only. You pretty much have to slog through her pages of commentary to see which books in each category of literature you would like to read. No thanks.

Overall, I would NOT recommend this book, though there may be some cases when parts of it are useful.

In this book, Susan Wise Bauer describes how to read and how to think critically about the works that you do read. She includes advice on how to read novels, autobiographies, histories, plays and poems. Most of it involves journals and reading books a few times. Understanding can be acquired through hard work and effort, which gives me hope.

Every section contains an annotated summary of suggested works and the suggested version to read along with the ISBN of that version and the price, which is very helpful.

This was an amazing romp through the Middle Ages. Bauer's swift, deft description of the events (documented from a variety of sources) gets to the heart and soul of the timeline. The only gripe is that everything happens so fast that details, interesting ones, seem to be skipped over. Nevertheless, this is a commendable book- truly a great work.

4 stars!

I've read all four volumes and found this one to be the most frustrating due to the lack of neutrality in the writing information. This volume wasn't written in a story form like the other volumes and the writing is a bit choppy, but this isn't what I had a problem with. This book has a disclaimer in the beginning that it's for older students so I was expecting more facts, but found the book to be more biased and included more misleading information than the other three. (there were a few misleading or absolute falsehoods in the others as well, but perhaps not as glaringly obvious?) If you don't have time to do more research I'd suggest bypassing this volume or to take it with many grains of salt.

I picked up this book because I wanted to work on my book reviewing and critiquing skills, and for this purpose I liked it. Bauer does a good job of providing a systematic self-study approach to reading that really does help organize one's reactions and impressions, and makes it easier to get more out of reading a book than just "I liked it" or "I hated it." Bauer provides a 3-step process, with a first read-through and then 2 additional passes which allow the reader to evaluate the book's structure and content through the use of various useful questions.

I was a bit annoyed at how mired in 'dead white guys' the reading lists are in the annotated reading list segments of the second part of each chapter. There were a couple female authors, and even a couple non-white ones, but the focus is still toward traditional Western classical education, with all the elitist, paternalist biases that tradition contains. But as a guide to get readers started reading more thoroughly, this book definitely works, and it is easy to use the framework Bauer provides to read other books not included in her lists. In fact Bauer does suggest adding in and taking out books from her lists as the readers feels is necessary. I have already read 50% of the books in her fiction list, so I am not quite her target audience anyway; the point of this book is really to help adults who did not get a solid classical education catch up through their own self-study (and through discussing their readings with a friend who is also reading the same books, but since I have no willing friend around who could keep up with my reading that is not likely to happen soon).