Comparison, please? Burrell's Oxford and Miller's Story

I’d love to know, too! I’ll have both for next year to use with Truthquest guides…but hope I’m not being redundant! :)Gina

We’ve used both The Story of the Ancient World and the First Ancient History this year, and I’ll be glad to share our impressions of both. The SOTAW is a lovely narrative, told very much in story form with more antiquated English. It covers Old Testament history in great detail, with other civilizations brought in mostly as they relate to Biblical events. So we did read about Babylon, Assyria, Sumer, Egypt, Palestine and the Persian Empire, as well as a few other civilizations (perhaps you can find a table of contents online to see which), but not with the depth you might find in another text. There are lovely paintings included as illustrations.

The Oxford First Ancient History, on the other hand, gives extensive coverage of early civilizations, the Greeks and the Romans, with only a few pages of Biblical history. There are numerous drawings and photographs and lots of information about daily life in each civilization. Some parts are written as a story, while others are a bit more “text bookish.”

My two 11-year-old sons used almost exclusively the Story of the Ancient World, and while it took a few weeks for them to become accustomed to the writing style, and to read carefully enough to give thoughtful narrations, they ended up loving the text and asking to read more of her volumes next year. I did read them a bit from the Oxford when I felt I wanted them to have a little more background or context but I don’t believe it’s necessary. I found that covering history this way, in story form, allowed them to get more out of their reading than when we used the fast and furious approach given in other books. The SOTAW also includes a booklist, to help you plug in historical fiction and other helpful texts, should you choose to use it as your sole spine.

My 14-year-old son also read the SOTAW, but I also had him read the First Ancient History alongside. Here’s his review.

“In the Oxford History, each chapter is two pages about a different subject each time. It’s slightly disjointed. If each section about a civilization was a paragraph, each little chapter would be similar to a sentence fragment – they would be so much better connected; it didn’t flow. It’s closer to a textbook but does contain good information.

The Story of the Ancient World is just that: a story. It is told with wonderful language from the olden times and tells the history of different peoples in an engaging manner. It flows very well from chapter to chapter, and at the end of the book it contains a timeline from creation through Alexander the Great.”

Can you tell he is our resident bibliophile and grammar policeman? 

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Aimee

Thanks for the assessments! Good to hear both can be useful….I’d hoped I wasn’t wasting $$ having both:)  And Aimee, I’m quite impressed with your sons language skills!  Blessings, Gina

I think if we’d just had the Story of the Ancient World along with an encyclopedia of world history to clarify some dates and events, we’d have been fine. On the other hand, the Oxford would be fine on its own too; it’s really a matter of preference. I’m finally figuring out after years and thousands of dollars of books that we can make things work without buying everything mentioned in resources like the Well Trained Mind! And yet, I’m already obsessing about what books to buy next year LOL…