About Us

A timeline for history and cultural studies from a Catholic perspective with an emphasis on living books and primary sources. A work in progress - big time. Naturally, the farther back in BC you go, the more difficult it is to nail down dates. Consider those earlier dates the best we could come up with using multiple sources (see Bibliography).

I’ve been putting together timelines since one of my best teachers ever introduced the idea to me in 7th grade (I’ve since made family history timelines, an American History timeline while I was teaching in a small Catholic school and quite a few others). Putting together good books, art, music, etc. to help our family, and possibly others, enjoy a living books introduction to our cultural heritage and to the pleasure of learning history is a thrill for me. It sure is nice to work on the web where you don’t have to worry about not leaving enough room to add more content later!

Organization:

I figured out a slightly quirky way to have the posts come out in the order I'd like, since blogger orders them according to the date posted. My son and I came up with a chart for what "posting dates" to mark each entry in order for them to come out in order. All the BC posts have been placed in the year 2000. The 1st through 10th centuries AD have been placed in 2001 and the 11th through 21st centuries in 2002. Here is a sample of what it looks like (easier to show you than to try to explain it further)...

BC - 2000

pre 16th century - January 1-15
16th century - January 16-30
15th century - February 1-15
14th century - February 16-28
etc.

General history resources, links, etc. will be left at whatever date they're originally posted on.

Other Notes:

We welcome and greatly appreciate contributions and suggestions. Please add comments to areas of the project currently in progress or e-mail: webmaster at love2learn dot net

A note about age recommendations:

First, these are rough recommendations and can be quite flexible. Often more mature books can be read aloud by younger readers. Older siblings will enjoy many of the picture books recommended here as well. The distinction between "high school" books and "teen/adult" books is a little tenuous. The basic distinction is this: high school books are generally acceptable for high school level, whereas the teen/adult books are written more for adult reading, but may also be appropriate for teens at the discretion of parents.

It is our hope that this list will help make history reading a family endeavor and that parents might enjoy picking up some of the more complex books while their children are studying that time period in history. I think it would be the rare student that would be able to read all the books on this book list - that really isn't the point. Nor do they need to be read in order. The idea is partly to assist parents in planning their history studies so different children could study the same time period of history together, even if they weren't necessarily reading the exact same books.

By the way, for the moment, the original Reading Your Way Through History list resides at readingyourwaythroughhistory.com.

Linkage and Book Sales:

Consistent with our philosophies at Love2learn.net, we make no money from any of our book recommendations. We have turned down many requests to join "affiliate" programs in order to earn a percentage of book sales on items we recommend. It is our belief that we are better able to review and recommend books that we don't have a financial interest in AND we prefer to promote small family-run bookshops of all sorts.