Listening to E. H. Gombrich

A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich
2006, Blackstone Audiobooks.
ISBN: 078617286X

Reviewed by Ana Braga-Henebry, M.A.

This is the kind of book that is written for children and yet any adult will enjoy it immensely. We listened to it during a summer trip, and all of our children, from 6 to 20 years old, were enthralled. Reader Ralph Coshan won an audio award for the reading of the book and we have truly grown to love the sound of his voice.

Gombrich's A Little History of the World is was right up there with Hillyer's A Child's History of the World, but even better--which I never thought I would say, as A Child's History of the World has been a favorite of mine for years. The very author revised and translated his own 1930's text into English before his death in 2002. This is why we have a recent publication in English of an European bestseller History text for children from the 1930s! The text is geared to children a bit older than the Calvert School classic, which is good for a homeschooling family.

I love the way the author dealt with a huge Catholic theme: the Reformation! And I love the fact that there is a whole chapter on the Counter-Reformation, which is largely ignored by the American public when studying European history. His account of Saint Ignatius Loyola's story and the founding of the Company of Jesus (Jesuits) makes this volume very Catholic-friendly indeed, which is something to be said for a History book from any major secular publisher. The way the author refers to God, and to the person of Jesus Christ, and to His teachings, is very respectful and wonderfully done. In my research about Gombrich's faith life, I learned that he converted to Christianity from Judaism early in his life.

I am currently leading a History 3rd/4th grade small class using Hillyer's text and comparing/complementing it with Van Loon's Story of Mankind. I believe these three volumes together can make up a superb World History curriculum for elementary school! Hedgeschool's First Timeline, done in first and second grades, would be a great place to start.

Highly recommended. This will be a great addition to your homeschool audio library.

Available from Blackstone Audio.

Borrowing a post from Number Two's blog

I have so loved this recent blog post of hers, I decided to borrow it!

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Friday, January 30, 2015

Books in my ears

Though I've mentioned my recent obsession with audiobooks a few times on this blog, I haven't yet dedicated an entire post to the topic, though I've been meaning to for a while. So here goes!

When I was a kid, from the age of 8 or 9 to about 16 my dad would read books aloud to us kids in the evening. If my memory can be trusted we began with The Hobbit, and afterwards worked through multiple volumes of Jules Verne, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and much more. I loved sitting on the living room floor or on my parents' big king-sized bed and tracing the carpet patterns with my eyes as my mind wandered far away, following my dad's voice. Those evenings are some of my favorite memories from my childhood, and set the scene for a growing love of hearing books read aloud as an adult.

My daddy, the reader.

My new-found love for having books piped through my headphones had humble beginnings last spring, when I decided to tackle George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. In March I posted a top ten TV show list here and linked to it on my Facebook. In the post I mentioned that I hadn't read the books behind HBO's A Game of Thrones yet, and a comment I got on my Facebook was that if I had a hard time finding them here (which was true) I could try finding audio versions online. I quickly got on that and for the next few months the combo of my old ipod and headphones was a faithful chores/painting/taxi ride companion. 

Once I finished all six books in that series in a ridiculously short amount of time I downloaded a few more audio books—Jane Austen's Emma and Orwell's 1984 among them—from LibriVox, which is a great project. On my annual summer trip to the US I got through 1984 before even hitting the American continent, but absolutely couldn't get through more than a few chapters of Emma, due to the distracting (read: terrible) narrators, and the fact that they were different with every chapter. So much for that.

But then during that summer vacation my lovely little sister Isa got an upgraded iPhone and had an old one lying around the house, which she gave to me. (I love all the hand-me-down electronics I get—my laptop is another, from big bro via my mom. Thanks family!) In a conversation at some point with my mom, she mentioned I could download the Audible app and probably get linked to the family account, thus having access to their entire library of audio books. At that point I was excited, but not nearly as much as I should have been!

Since July I've listened to so many books on Audible—from classics like Edith Wharton's An Age of Innocence and lots and lots of Austen (as mentioned in this post, and I was very happy to listen to a high quality reading of Emma!), to nonfiction like A Little History of the World by E. Gombrich, or lighter reading like some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster and an Agatha Christie. I've also gotten through some around-the-world fiction like Anna Karenina, A Good Earth by Pearl Buck, and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and even a lecture course called The Story of the Human Language by Professor John McWhorter! That's not even the full extent but it gives you a good idea of the breadth of choice I have, and there's still so much more I'm excited to dig into. The beauty of it is not only do I have access to all this literature in English in a country where it's hard to get, but also that technology has given me a way to pick books off my parent's American bookshelves while I live in Africa! 

Photo cred

The particular occasion that prompted the timing of this blog post is that today I finished the final chapter of Tolkien's The Return of the King, after having gone through the entire trilogy. No, I didn't hear my dad's voice in the narrator's elderly timbre and British accent, but I was often reminded of those nights of tracing the flowers on living room's rug with my little finger, listening to daddy with my brothers around me, all of us transported to a different world.  

Thanks daddy-dear for a beautiful gift!

Ten Reasons to Study World History

My Google Reader just brought me this post by Suzanne Temple. I copy it below for your enjoyment!

We just finished listening to A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich, read by Ralph Coshen. Ana-Braga Henebry recommended it at the Love2Learn blog and we would like to thank her for introducing us to this remarkable audio. We loved every minute of it, and that's saying a lot because it is nine hours long!

Ten Reasons to Study World History:

• World History is the story of where we came from.
• World History puts us in contact with those people and cultures that developed, discovered, and or invented many of the things we rely upon for life today. This way, we know who to thank for our alphabet, for example, language, numerical system, religion, or system of government.
  
• The study of World History presents a broad tapestry of human thought and behavior throughout time which gives us insight into human nature.
  
• History repeats itself. While we may not be able to change the course of modern events entirely, we can take the lessons from history and use them to change ourselves and influence our culture.
  
• The study of World History makes us grateful for the blessings of modern life. I'd rather pay a mortgage on a house in the suburbs, for example, than live in a cold and drafty castle-- thank you.
• A study of World History assists in the moral life. History is replete with examples of good men to imitate and bad men to learn from by negative example.
• The study of history helps us to understand the meaning of historical references in literature, poetry, and political writing. What, for example, is the proverbial "Gordian Knot?"
• The study of World History breathes life into the study of world geography. With a rich understanding of World History, maps come alive with the stories of the people who lived there, cultivated the land, and explored the seas.
• The study of World History helps us to see how people viewed themselves and events during their lifetimes and how those same things are viewed today. It is a lesson in perspective and objectivity.
• The study of World History helps us to see how very small we are, and is the backdrop on which we place all detailed studies of particular histories.

Listening, again...

...to Gombrich's A Little History of the World. Suzanne in a recent post gave me the idea to listen again. Amazing to think it has been three years since we listened to it, back when we took Number One to his sophomore year at ND. We still love it, although the older kids are amazed at at how much History they have learned since than, that wasn't told in a History book for children.

The chapter on the birth of Christ, compared among the other children History books of children we also love such as Hyllier's (our very favorite) and Van Loon's, is superbly done.

For anyone who have used Mary Daly's First Timeline, these are all excellent sources for subsequent study.

on Van Loon's The story of Mankind

Uneven, January 19, 2009 By  Ana Braga-Henebry (Rural South Dakota) - See all my reviews     The author is a secular humanist and I find that all religions in the book are ultimately regarded as fanaticism. While he dealt with the ancients we were OK, although some chapters were entirely his opinion with no historical content whatsoever. I could barely accomplish the reading aloud of the Reformation chapter, but the next chapter made me give up this book as a History read aloud for homeschooled children entirely: Saint Ignatius is all wrong! If you are Catholic, or even Protestant--because Van Loon does justice to neither--Chapters 16 and 17 of Light of the Nations (Catholic Textbook Project) will give you a much better idea of the errors of the Church then, and of the Counter-reformation. For an older, wiser History student it would be OK, as Van Loon does have some delightful style bits and innovative History-telling perspectives. The book, is important to note, changes drastically in format midpoint, as if if the author pieced together things he had done in the past. The chapters become much longer and the reading/student level quite older. I would recommend both Gombrich A Little History of the World and Hillyer's A Child's History of the World for children as better choices for a story-like classical History text at this point in the book!