"Shakespeare? Far too modern for my tastes." - Anna, an old Classics teacher

[vote_incitatus]

So zooming forward from Ancient Rome, I am now firmly in the AD and reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History.

Why?

I started reading The Dreamer webcomic. And realised that all the other commenters were American and knew exactly what was going on here in the Revolutionary War. I knew that they were having a revolt. Against the British.

S

Comments

[linny822]

hehe, this actually pleases me greatly to know. see, i obviously grew up immersed in american history (and had a knack and love for learning it), and i knew this stuff.

but ask me to recite the song nick's mum taught me to remember all of henry viii's wives, and i'd just say 'pffft.' sure, we learned about britain in world history, and i could tell you some things about the great london fire, queen victoria, and a biased view of who really owns northern ireland--but i know way too much about america and its 43 and a half presidents to be proud of my world knowledge.

our countries are so biased in the pursuit of education. i'm glad to see you're branching out just for fun though! :)

[vote_incitatus]

I know, I'd love to have learnt more world history in school. We did World War 2 about a billion times, but you wouldn't know it was a WORLD war, because we only focused on Europe's involvement! I have vague memories of doing "The Egyptians" and "The Aztecs" in primary school, and there was one module in High School on "Race Relations in the USA" which was pretty good, but that's about it.

Meanwhile I'm loving this book. Everything I've gleaned about American history is all coming together and making sense! I'd heard of people like Paul Revere from reading books by American authors, but obviously they didn't stop to explain, because every schoolchild knows about Paul Revere!...as long as they were a schoolchild in America. So this is great! I finally know what the Boston Tea Party was, I've been unclear on that for years! Whooo!

[thricebornfenix]

May I join in? I've had to learn most of what I know of world history from Wikipedia or The History Channel - not necessarily the most reliable sources, yet in some ways, more so than my teachers and school textbooks were. History was one of my favorite classes, too.

[vote_incitatus]

Wikipedia's amazing. I've found hours have gone by while I learn about something (usually history) going from link to link. Recently I learnt about the Parthian Empire and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. But yeah, I do have mild concerns about its reliability. And books have the advantage of being more linear than a website. It's like a strangely written, very long novel...except I know the end.