Review Detail

Rise and Fall: Great Empires that Shaped the World is a good introduction to the basics of 9 historic civilizations that had a major impact on history. The paragraphs were broken up throughout the page with key information about the art and culture, religion, trade, government, and decline that shaped these civilizations. There are small captions throughout to give added facts of interest about the illustrations. The contents make it searchable, and the glossary helps define key people and concepts featured in the book. It is fascinating to learn that the name we call them today might not be the name they called themselves, such as the Minoan and Aztec civilizations.
Considering these civilizations came before the photograph, there are illustrations to help readers visualize the information. The illustrations attempt to incorporate a lot of representation in just a few short pages per civilization, making them very small and busy. There was one questionable image in the Benin civilization that may give teachers an eye roll once their students see it and share it around without much explanation of why it needed to be included.
Overall, this is a valuable resource in sparking curiosity about the past and inspiring further research. This is an especially good resource in the Montessori curriculum that has a specific unit on researching ancient civilizations.