Chronological History

Sometimes we speak of world history as though it belongs to people. It doesn't—it belongs to God, and though people play prominently within the historical narrative, it always remains under God's auspices and control. The problem with losing the right perspective isn't that we'll get the facts wrong, it's that we'll fail to understand what they mean, what the purpose of past events is, and what we can look forward to.

Human history began all at once in the same place: the Garden of Eden, where God made Adam and Eve as the crown of all Creation. He told them to fill the earth and take dominion of it, and He also told them not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They ate the fruit anyway, and mankind was removed from paradise and introduced to tension, pain, and resistance.

The story of the world is in many ways simply the story of adversity. For the enemies of God, it's adversity in the form of the failure and futility of purely human endeavor; for God's people, it's the story of fighting for the truth against secular philosophies, fighting for holiness despite the pervasiveness of sin, and fighting for the Gospel in the face of persecution and death.

Jesus Christ is our only hope. He is the Prince of Peace, the defeater of Death, and the King of the Universe, the saver of souls and the punisher of wickedness. His kingdom is the restoration and glorious fulfillment of the paradise from which Adam and Eve were removed, and we work, wait, hope and pray for the quick fulfillment of His will in all things.

This is our framework for history. While it's important to study things like the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the ancient Near East, it's only important when investigated through the lens of God's ultimate sovereignty and plan. The story of mankind is the story of redemption, and only when we analyze battles, kings, treaties, and catastrophes from God's perspective can we truly make sense of them.

Otherwise, it's all fairly irrelevant and useless. Sure, there's Napoleon's dictum that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, but a quick survey of the past will show that each successive generation does repeat the sins of their fathers, and that without Christ's real physical life on Earth as a centering point, there's no real cause for optimism or hope of any kind.

Christ's love not only makes the trajectory of history cause for hope; it reveals the truly great moments of the past, events that to the secular eye seem insignificant or even pernicious. We're speaking of the progress of the true Church, of course, and of each soul that God calls and makes His own through the agency of His Holy Spirit. These are the milestones we look for and celebrate.

We carry a lot of world history products. Because it's the story of God's work in the world and our human responses, we believe it's important to know and understand. Not everything we carry is Christian; there are plenty of secular resources here. We encourage you to use whichever ones work best for your situation, but that you do so with a view to understanding the will and work of the One who made history in the first place.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.

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1066: The Year of the Conquest
by David Howarth
from Penguin Putnam
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in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$16.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
11 Days in December
by Stanley Weintraub
from New American Library
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1776
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from Simon and Schuster
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1776
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1861: The Civil War Awakening
by Adam Goodheart
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500 Nations
by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
1st edition from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
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Abraham Lincoln: Great Speeches
Dover Thrift Editions
by Abraham Lincoln & John Grafton, editor
from Dover Publications
Political Philosophy for 10th-Adult
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Abraham Lincoln: The Man & His Faith
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Admiral David Glasgow Farragut
by Chester G. Hearn
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Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
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Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
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by Theodore Roosevelt
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Aeneid
by Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald
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Ancient Literature/Epic Poetry for 10th-Adult
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Aeneid
by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles
from Penguin Putnam
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$19.00
Aeneid Of Virgil
by Virgil, translated by Allan Mandelbaum
from Bantam Books
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$5.95
Aeschylus I: The Oresteia (old)
The Complete Greek Tragedies
by Aeschylus (translation by Richmond Lattimore)
from University of Chicago
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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Aeschylus II: The Oresteia
The Complete Greek Tragedies
by Aeschylus (translation by Richmond Lattimore)
3rd edition from University of Chicago
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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$14.00
Aeschylus' Oresteia
Penguin Classics
by Aeschylus (translation by Robert Fagles)
from Penguin Classics
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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$16.00
Aeschylus' Oresteia
by Aeschylus, translated by Peter Meineck
from Hackett Publishing Company
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
in Ancient Literature (Location: LIT1-ANC)
$13.50
Aeschylus' Oresteian Trilogy
Penguin Classics
by Aeschylus, translated by Phillip Vellacott
from Penguin Classics
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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Aesop's Fables
by Aesop
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Fairy Tales & Fables for 10th grade-adult
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$5.95
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
by Agatha Christie
2012 Reissue from William Morrow & Company
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Age of Enlightenment
Great Ages of Man
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Great Ages of Man
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Age of Fighting Sail
by C. S. Forester
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American Naval History for 8th-Adult
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Age of Fighting Sail
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1st edition from Doubleday & Company
American Naval History for 8th-Adult
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Great Ages of Man
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Age of Religious Wars
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Story of Civilization IX
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2023 Caldecott Honor Book
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Air Forces of the World
by Sue Butterworth, editor
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Aku-Aku
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Album of the Civil War
by William Loren Katz
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Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow
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Alexander the Great, Killer of Men
by David J. Lonsdale
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Alfred the Great
by Asser
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All He Knew
by Helen Frost
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All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
from Ballantine Books
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$8.99
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
Book Club (BCE/BOMC) from Ballantine Books
War/Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
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All Shook Up
Pivotal Moments in American History
by Glenn C. Altschuler
from Oxford University
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Amazing Grace
by Eric Metaxas
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Amazing Mr. Doolittle
by Quentin Reynolds
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America 1933
by Michael Golay
from Free Press
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America in the Air War
by Edward Jablonski
from Time-Life Books
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America the Beautiful/ A Man of Destiny
by the editors of Country Beautiful Magazine
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America's Heroes
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America's Longest War
by George C. Herring
2nd edition from McGraw-Hill
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America's National Battlefield Parks
by Joseph E. Stevens
from University of Oklahoma Press
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America: From Gridlock to Deadlock
A Basic History of the United States Volume 6
by Clarence B. Carson
from American Textbook Committee
American History Reference for 9th-Adult
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$19.00
American Caesar
by William Manchester
from Little, Brown & Company
for 10th grade-adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
American Children Through Their Books
by Sister Monica Kiefer
1970 printing from University of Pennsylvania Press
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
American Civil War
by Robert K. Krick
from Osprey Publishing
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$6.50 (1 in stock)
American Civil War
by John Keegan
from Vintage Books
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$18.95
American Dream
by Stephen K. McDowell & Mark Beliles
from Providence Foundation
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American Fairy Tales
1st edition from Hyperion Books for Children
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American Heritage History of the American Revolution
by Bruce Lancaster
from American Heritage Publishing Co.
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American Heritage History of the Indian Wars
by Robert M. Utley, Wilcomb E. Washburn
Revised from American Heritage Publishing Co.
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American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by Jon Meacham
from Random House
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American Passage
by Vincent J. Cannato
from Harper Perennial
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American Revolutionaries
by Milton Meltzer
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American Spirit
from LIFE Books
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American Story: The Revolutionaries
Time-Life: The American Story
from Time-Life Books
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American Ulysses
by Ronald C. White
from Random House
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Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
by Gordon S. Wood
from Penguin Books
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Amistad
by Helen Kromer
from The Pilgrim Press
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An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth
by M. K. Gandhi
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Ancient America
Great Ages of Man
by Jonathan Norton Leonard
from Time-Life Books
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Ancient City
by Hazel Dodge, Peter Connolly
First Thus from Oxford University
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Ancient Egypt
by David P. Silverman
from Oxford University
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$18.00 (1 in stock)
Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends
by Lewis Spence
Reprint from Dover Publications
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Ancient Rome
by Richard Maybury
2nd edition from Bluestocking Press
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$11.95
And There Was Light
by Jacques Lusseyran
Third Edition from New World Library
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$18.95
Andersonville
by MacKinlay Kantor
from World Publishing Company
for 9th-Adult
1955 Pulitzer Prize Winner
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Annals
by Tacitus, translated with introduction & notes by A.J. Woodman
from Hackett Publishing Company
for Adult
in Ancient Literature (Location: LIT1-ANC)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Annals of Imperial Rome
Penguin Classics
by Tacitus
from Penguin Classics
Historical Non-Fiction for 10th-Adult
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$19.00
Anne Bradstreet
by Heidi L. Nichols
from P&R Publishing
Biography for 10th-Adult
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Anne Bradstreet
Christian Renegades Series
by Doug Wilson
3rd edition from Canon Press
Biography for
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$16.95
Anne Bradstreet
by Faith Cook
from Evangelical Press
for 6th-Adult
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Annotated Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
by Ulysses S. Grant
from W. W. Norton and Co.
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Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Paul S. Eriksson, INC.
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works
Oxford World's Classics
by Anselm, edited and introduction by Brian Davies and Gillian Evans
from Oxford University
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$14.95 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Antigone
Dover Thrift Editions
by Sophocles, translated by Sir George Young
from Dover Publications
Ancient Tragedy for 9th-Adult
in Ancient Literature (Location: LIT1-ANC)
$3.00 $2.00 (2 in stock)
Antigone
by Sophocles
from Hackett Publishing Company
Ancient Tragedy for 9th-Adult
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$10.50
Apollo on the Moon
by Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
from Dial Press
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Apostle of Liberty
by Stephen McDowell
from Cumberland House
Biography for 9th-Adult
in Leaders in Action (Location: BIO-LIA)
Arabian Nights
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith, editors, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Eastern Fairy Tales for 9th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
Arabian Nights
International Collectors Library
by Sir Richard Burton, illustrated by Steele Savage
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
Arabian Nights
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith, editors, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Eastern Fairy Tales for 9th-Adult
in Scribner Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SCRIB)
$29.99
Arabian Nights
by Amabel Williams-Ellis, illustrated by Pauline Baynes
from Blackie & Son LTD.
for 9th-Adult
Arabian Nights
by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith, editors, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
from Book-of-the-Month Club
Eastern Fairy Tales for 9th-Adult
Arabian Nights I
Signet Classics
by Richard Burton (Translator), Jack Zipes (Adapter)
from Signet Classics
Eastern Fairy Tales for 9th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$9.95
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