ISBN0495050539

Until this year, when I had to use this textbook, I LOVED history. It was my favorite subject next to English, and I often bought my book home to read it for fun. I especially enjoyed American history and selected parts of European history, specifically the English, French, German...

However, when I received this book this year, I was stunned. Not only was it extremely heavy and hurt my back from carrying it every day, but it was DULL. He somehow managed to make history tedious. When we had to take notes on a section, one would literally have to copy every sentence. There may have been a lot of information [believe me, there is!], but it was not presented in an interesting manner at all. Maybe for someone who dislikes history it won't be so bad, but it drove me mad.

This book manages to confuse-the-heck out of the reader by its poorly executed editing and lackluster written content.Its many examples of contradicting content, the obvious failure of the many contributors in correlating their facts, along with the poor editing, contribute to its confusion and overall boredom. This text should be pulled from use and publication! Rated it two stars only because the chapter on WWII was darn good (the only part in the book that made sense, and yes, I read the whole book).
Pity the poor individual who is forced into using this extremely bad example of a history text book. Beware.

This review was mistakenly placed upon this text by myself, it is not for this text!

This Review is meant for the text book: "World History Since 1500, Volume II by William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Speilvogel".

I hearby retract this review as of 09/06/02 for "World History text by William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Spielvogel".

This book was a required selection for a class that I am taking. I had read the negative reviews here on amazon.com and was very biased about reading it. But once I did, I found out how wrong they are. I have really enjoyed this book and it is well made and beautifully put together. I would suggest making your own opinions though. History doesn't have to be "boring"; it's up to you to decide for yourself how to interpret the information.

This book is written in a very engaging manner by a pair who clearly love history and know what they're talking about. They cover the most important material, with quite a bit of detail, but it's not overwhelming. The book is well laid out visually, making it easy to read. The source material they include is fascinating. This is the best world history textbook I've found. I would recommend it to students from high school through college, or to anyone wanting to learn history for pleasure.