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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 further 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 close and far 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.
Augustus Caesar’s World follows Foster’s approach by focusing on the life of the second Roman Emperor, covering the years 44 BC to 14 AD. Augustus was an 18-year-old boy in 44 BC when his Uncle Julius, who had declared himself to be the first Roman Emperor, was assassinated. The book covers all the events – civil war, revolution, conspiracy, which led to Augustus becoming the second Roman Emperor in 27 BC. Even up to modern times, the simple family name of “Caesar” became synonymous with “king” – “Kaiser” in Germany and “Tsar” in Russia, for example. Foster spends many words on these events, and the personalities who shaped and participated in these events. Just for this alone, this book gives a fascinating, very readable, slice of ancient Roman life. But there is so much more as the author reveals the mesh of history. We see the first King Herod, called Herod the Great, and his close relations to the growing Roman power, his vile family life, and his influence on Judea, where, during Caesar Augustus’ reign, a baby was born, the Incarnate Son of God. Genevieve Foster brings in the people who were living in Gaul, the old name for France, who had been conquered by Julius Caesar, and the Germanic tribes, who resisted Roman rule for centuries. The people and events in China and Japan, the Mayans and Incas in South America, and the accomplishments of the Greek and Jewish culture of the day, all play a part in the narrative. And did you know that Chinese silk was transported to Rome in those days? The ancient world was covered with such trading routes – a prime source of connections in the mesh of history.
All the above, and so much more, can be learned from reading Augustus Caesar’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. Shakespeare’s famous play, Julius Caesar, would make interesting reading after Foster’s book. Finally, it would be an interesting exercise to see how many World Landmark books cover, in more detail, the topics and people in this book (hint - there are several)!