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History, when you start at one place and look back along a given line, seems totally linear. For example, tracing your lineage back through your father, sticking only to his surname. But if you examine all your relatives, your genealogy looks more like - well - a tree. If you step back a bit in your mind and consider broader questions and regions beyond your own local area and time, history looks much more like a three-dimensional mesh, full of crossovers and curving lines and many connections. By “connections” I mean that people and events seemingly far away in time and geography from each other actually influence each other.
Genevieve Foster understood this very well and produced a series of books that are simply mind-blowing. For the middle school student, or even a high school student, who thinks that he or she doesn’t like history, Foster clearly shows this mesh of history as it weaves around certain famous characters and important events. Her text and her beautiful illustrations and charts teach about these characters and events but Foster’s lively books are so much more interesting to read than typical dry history textbooks since she tells the story of the mesh of history that only God can weave. Even dry dates come alive when one learns what else was going on in the world at that time and how so many people and events connected to the topic of her main narrative.
Abraham Lincoln’s World follows Foster’s approach by focusing on the life of this famous President, 1809 to 1865. We learn much about this incredible man, since Foster uses abundant original sources and actual quotes. Lincoln’s life was an exciting one, culminated by the American Civil War and his assassination. But so much else happened around the world in those years. Princess Victoria was born, grew up, unexpectedly became Queen of England, married, had a wonderful family, and was widowed during Lincoln’s lifetime. England’s empire, economy, technology, and the form of its democracy also changed greatly in those years. Japan opened itself to the world, Napoleon of France was defeated – twice, and there were many revolutions across Europe and South America. Railroads swept the world, along with other advances in science and technology, and Florence Nightingale changed nursing and thus revolutionized medical practice. Missionaries went to Africa and other places and Germany and Italy became united countries. Charles Dickens lived almost the exact same years as did Lincoln (1812 to 1870) and produced all his great books in Lincoln’s lifetime. When Lincoln was a young man, Texas gained its independence from Mexico.
All the above, and so much more, can be learned from reading Abraham Lincoln’s World. I would suggest reading it straight through, but in case a child needs to extract some specific information from the book, there is a very good index. Finally, it would be an interesting exercise to see how many American and World Landmark books cover, in more detail, the topics and people in this book (hint - there are a lot)!