4 ms·
Outside of some old tropes, seems pretty good (from a western perspective). This is a text I would've devoured as a child.
by Eumenes 3y ago
Outside of some old tropes, seems pretty good (from a western perspective). This is a text I would've devoured as a child.
- damnesian 3y agoAgreed- anyone who attended a public elementary school in the US up til about 20 years ago got the traditional western white male story of history ("Columbus sailed the ocean blue / in 1492," the mnemonic goes, but of course no mention of the extermination of the Arawak in the textbook)- considering that implicit bias, yes, 100% if I found this book on my grandparents' bookshelf when I was a kid I would have devoured it too- and I say it with confidence because their shelves did have books like this and I did read them, eagerly. They also had a Childcraft set from the 1940s, which included a "peoples of the world" volume, and a "Myths and legends" volume, and even though there was bias, I absolutely absorbed those as well.
- rufus_foreman 3y agoI had a copy as a kid in the 1970's and loved it. I decided to become a Stoic after reading the chapter "A Good Emperor and a Bad Son".