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Title: Around the World in a Hundred Years
ISBN: 0399225277
Author:
Jean Fritz
Publicate Date: 1994-03-23
Publish: 1994-03-23
List Price: $18.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.84
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.67
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1: Horrible!
I wish I had read this BEFORE I gave it to my son to read! It is very anti-Christian.
For example, the author writes about wonderful advances in scientific principles and then launches into: "Then suddenly all this wondering and figuring stopped. Christianity was a new religion, fighting for survival, and in A.D. 391 Christians burned the city of Alexandria and its famous libraries, which contained, along with many ancient treasures of scholarship, the work of Ptolemy. Christians did not believe in scholarship. They thought it was sacrilegious to be curious. Anything people wanted to know, they said, could be found in the Bible."
Christians were NOT responsible for burning the city of Alexandria. It just gets worse from there on.
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2: Anti-Catholic
I haven't read more than a couple chapters but what i did read was too anti-catholic for me. We scrapped the book. Wish I hadn't wasted my money on that one!
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3: Glad I read through it before reading it to my children!
I picked this book up last week at a homeschool convention. My oldest son is very interested in history and learning about the explorers. We have enjoyed books by this author before, so I felt like it was a good buy. I can't believe how blatantly anti-Christian the author is in this book. She makes Christians sound like the wart of the world! She makes it sound like the world progressed in knowledge and achievements in spite of Christianity. Although I am no history expert, some of her statements just didn't sit well with me, and I would really question whether what she wrote is fact or just her ignorant, prejudiced opinion. I will never purchase another book by her again.
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4: A very good resource for courses on the European exploration and exploitation of the Western Hemisphere
The European exploration of the rest of the world did not begin in 1492, although that is the impression given to grade school children. In a time when there were few ways to preserve food, Europeans had an almost insatiable demand for spices. Not only did the spices preserve the food; they made it possible to eat it when it was spoiled. When the Turks conquered the Arabian Peninsula, they cut off the overland trade routes where the spices were transported from Asia to Europe. This created a shortage of spices, the consequences of which were serious. Not only did it reduce the food supply in Europe; it also increased the risk of food poisoning.
The solution was to find a sea route to the Spice Islands and the first person to make the attempt was the Portuguese king known as Prince Henry the Navigator. He sent expedition after expedition down the western coast of Africa in search of a route to Asia and other riches. Their primary interest was in spices and gold and when they didn't find much of either, they returned with Africans that were sold into slavery. This was the true beginning of the practice of trafficking in slaves from the African continent. Eventually, Portuguese sailors did reach India, establishing the existence of the route.
However, the route was long and dangerous, the storms on the southern tip of Africa meant that the ships must swing wide of them. This was the impetus for Christopher Columbus to sail westward in an attempt to reach Asia. Even though the Vikings had discovered the Western Hemisphere decades before the time of Columbus, that knowledge was ignored. His ships sailed westward and encountered the Western Hemisphere, opening up two entirely new continents for exploration and exploitation. The book ends with a lengthy description of the voyage of Magellan, who headed the first European expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
This book is an excellent recapitulation of the European voyages of discovery and is frank in describing the thoughts and attitudes of the Europeans. Their interest was in spices and gold and they thought nothing of torturing and killing the people they found in the new territories. The practice of killing a large percentage of entire populations and enslaving the rest became the norm. There were a few who tried to treat the Native peoples as equals most notably Balboa. However, that farsighted attitude did him little good as he was ordered back to Spain where he was beheaded. I strongly recommend this book as a reference in social studies classes where the topic is the European explorations that led to the discovery of the Western Hemisphere.
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5: We enjoyed the book, but.....
Ms. Fritz, your bias is showing! I had to edit and editorialize as I read this to my children to correct numerous misstatements and oversimplifications regarding Christianity. For example, Christians were not opposed to scholarship ~ it's largely because of Catholic and Byzantine monks that Greek and Roman literature was preserved.
Furthermore, I've come to think of Jean Fritz as the queen of the sentence fragment. I personally find bad grammar distracting when I'm reading.
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