Fantastic survey of George Washington’s life and of the major people and events in history that happened around the world during his lifetime. Very well done. I loved all the illustrations, as well, and this book helped me understand some connections about historical events in the 18th century. Highly recommend youth and adults.

Awesome History Book for younger children

A sort of world history for kids, from 1740-1800, set in the timeline of George Washington's life. I didn't expect much going into this Newbery Honor Book, written in 1941, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It ties world events together quite cleverly, and the narrative style is interesting and engaging. My 10-year-old son is interested in history and I think he'll love this one.

This is one of my all time favorite books to read out loud with children. I am happy to have had another opportunity to read it.
This is a book that brings history to life and connects the things that were happening in different parts of the world. I would recommend it to anyone of any age.

My little brother read this book for school and totally hated it. I assured him that there was no way that it way that it could be as bad as he thought, and decided to read it for myself.
In all honesty, this book could have been really great. Foster has a really vivid writing style, and you learn about a lot of interesting people. The thing that made this book boring and hard to understand was the way the sections were set up. The book would tell you a tiny bit about one person and then a tiny bit about another person, then another person and so on. When the book finally gets back to the original person you can't remember what they did in the last section. By the middle of the book I had lost nearly all interest and ended up skimming. This book would have been wonderful if they had just arranged the stories better.
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Gripping and vividly written, GW's World by Genevieve Foster is by far the best history book I have read for school this year.
Ms. Foster combines extraordinary detail (it feels so real you wonder: 'was she there?') with engaging writing that I have never experienced in a history book before.

And when it says George Washington's WORLD, it means WORLD. Foster doesn't miss anything.

5 Stars

Love the complexity of history. Written in the best way possible, the greatest history book series for lower grades. As King Solomon reflects "There is nothing new under the sun"

We read this to supplement our history curriculum this year. It was wonderful in parts (I'm thinking of Marie Antoinette and parts about Washington in the War), but it could be confusing going between the characters and stories. I prefer Story of the World, but that's more for younger grades. This is an interesting series for junior high or high school as a supplement. I'd rate it 3.5. It was definitely better than Caesar's World, but I can tell the author has some biases I wouldn't agree with.

I really enjoyed the format of this book and learning about all the different things that were going on at the same time as George Washington's life.

This isn't my usual three star rating-I didn't particularly enjoy reading this but had to for school, however for a history book it was well written and also told in a 'story like way' which personally I found it added interest.

Thanks for reading my review!!

Super interesting. I loved how the book talked about different events happening all over the world at the same time and how they sometimes affected each other.

This is actually quite a long book, but I was completely caught up in it. I actually read in one sitting! I loved the broad sweep of history it gave, across the Americas, Europe, and China, with brief mentions of Japan, India, and Australia too. I made connections between events and people that I had never realized before.

Most history books, it seems to me, look in-depth at one event or a short period of time, in a specific geographical location. Or, in textbooks, chapters are divided up that way. Foster's approach, instead, looks at things very broadly, but not in a lot of depth.

I loved making connections that I'd never made before as Foster shifted from one place to another. (For example, that Johann Sebastian Bach was still living when Washington was born).

One surprise for me was the role that Germans played in the American Revolution. George II was German and in fact barely learned to speak English at all. And then, when England could not find enough men to fight in the war, it hired Germans (Hessians) to fight for them. These were the troops that Washington defeated at the Delaware River.

Because of the broad sweep, there were a lot of unanswered questions in my mind. (Like, how did the German George II become King of England in the first place?) But these I can seek out separately. What I gained was a better understanding of how people and events overlapped across the globe during this period of time.

While it was written for children, I'm not sure how many would have soaked it in from cover to cover as I did. But it's certainly a great resource and I'm glad my library has retained a copy of this older work. It surely must have been an ambitious undertaking for the author.