One Year in History Series

About this curriculum

Most history books start at a certain point and then discuss what happened next, presenting history as a chronological chain of events. But the books in this series present history laterally —that is, instead of telling what happened chronologically, each of these well-crafted biographical novels tells what was happening virtually everywhere in the world, all within a single year. It’s a fascinating way of offering readers a sophisticated new perspective on history. History is generally taught as a narrative, a story in which one event follows another in chronological succession. The two books in Mary Ann Whittier’s small but significant series present history laterally—that is, they each explore the events that happened all over the globe in a single year, thereby transforming the story to multiple perspectives of a worldwide series of events that can be comprehended and evaluated in the context of one another. In this way, readers can view people making decisions in the context of knowing—or, more often, not knowing—how others in their world were acting. For mos…