Cultural History

You'll often hear proponents of whole-book education methods talk about the benefit of learning history through literature. They aren't talking about the kind of history you might learn in a textbook—for them, knowing the dates of the Thirty Years' War or the name of the first prime minister of Australia isn't that important. The kind of history you'll learn in novels and diaries and essays is cultural history.

How people live, what they learn in school, the weapons they use, their religion, how they perceive their role in the world: these are all elements of culture that fiction and private documents reveal much better and more thoroughly than books simply detailing facts. Source documents are the product as much of the culture in which they're written, after all, as they are the result of the authors' own invention.

Books simply about the customs and daily life of a people group do have their place, too. You might not have as intimate a portrait of Victorian England after reading What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew as you would after reading Great Expectations, but you'll learn plenty. Sometimes you just need the straightforward facts, and at times like those novels are not your friends.

The real question for many, however, isn't how do I learn about different cultures?, but WHY should I learn about different cultures? Well, there's no law saying you have to, but aside from the fun you can have doing so, learning about foreign or lost cultures is one way to better understand your own place in the grand scheme of things.

It's not that the Chinese New Year festival will shed any great light on your own situation, but the deeper you study the cultural contexts around the globe, the more you realize how similar people really are. Understanding connections is one of the great advantages of a well-rounded education; the connections between people a solid grounding in cultural history can offer are especially poignant.

Of course, reading about the origins of your own culture will help you understand why you do things the way you do, why you think the way you do, why the people around you are the way they are. As Christians, this knowledge can help us share the Gospel easier than if we knew nothing of the background of the people we try to reach, and that is the one reason for studying cultural history that trumps all the others.

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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61 Items found Print
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All the Children of the World
by Karen Mezek Leimert
First Edition from Nelsonword Publishing Group
for 1st-3rd grade
in Oversized Picture Books (Location: PIC-OVER)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
by Eric Carle
from Philomel Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Baby Blessing
by Welleran Poltarnees
from Laughing Elephant
for Kindergarten-Adult
in Art History & Appreciation (Location: ELE-ARTHIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Boll Weevil
by Glen Rounds
from Golden Gate Junior Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Brave Harriet
by Marissa Moss
from Harcourt Children's Books
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in Picture Books (Location: PICTURE)
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Camille and the Sunflowers
by Laurence Anholt
1st edition from Barron's
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$7.50 (1 in stock)
Camille Pissarro
by Alix Wood
from Windmill Books
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Charles Darwin's Around-the-World Adventure
by Jennifer Thermes
from Abrams Books for Young Readers
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in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Child's Story of the Child's Book
by Raven
from F. A. Davis Company
for Kindergarten-2nd grade
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Children from Australia to Zimbabwe
by Anna Rhesa Versola, Maya Ajmera
Revised ed. from Charlesbridge
for 1st-3rd grade
in Diversity & Multicultural Books (Location: HISMC-MUL)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Children Just Like Me
by Anabel Kindersley, Barnabas Kindersley
from DK Publishing
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$19.99 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Children of Foreign Lands
by Elizabeth F. McCrady, verses by Kate Cox Goddard, illustrated by Ninon Macknight
from Platt and Munk Publishers
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$20.00 (1 in stock)
Christopher Columbus
by Elaine Murray Stone
500 Anv from Tyndale House
Biography for Preschool-3rd Grade
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City Book
by Lucille Corcos
from Golden Press
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Clara Barton: Amazing Civil War Nurse
Amazing Americans
by Mary Dodson Wade
from Enslow
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois
by Amy Novesky, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
from Abrams Books for Young Readers
for Preschool-2nd grade
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$7.00 (1 in stock)
Doctor Like Papa
by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, Illustrated by James Bernardin
First Edition from HarperCollins
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Eye for Color
by Natasha Wing, Art by Julia Breckenreid
from Henry Holt and Company
for Kindergarten-3rd grade
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Flight
by Robert Burleigh; illustrated by Mike Wimmer
from Philomel Books
for Preschool- 3rd Grade
1992 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award
in Aviation History (Location: HISV-AVIA)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Food and Recipes of Westward Expansion
Cooking Throughout American History
by George Erdosh
1st edition from PowerKids Press
for 1st-4th grade
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$4.50 (1 in stock)
Girl with a Watering Can
by Ewa Zadrzynska, illustrated by Arnold Skolnick
from Chameleon Books, Inc.
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in Art History & Appreciation (Location: ELE-ARTHIS)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Gonna Sing My Head Off
by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Allen Garns
First Printing from Scholastic Reference
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in Music Education & Reference (Location: ELE-MUSREF)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Hairdo!
by Ruth Freeman Swain, illustrated by Cat Bowman Smith
from Holiday House
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning
by Rosalyn Schanzer
from HarperCollins
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
How We Travel
by James Franklin Chamberlain
from Macmillan
for 2nd-4th grade
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
I Spy a Freight Train: Transportation in Art
by Lucy Micklethwait
from Greenwillow Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
If the World Were a Village
by David J. Smith
1st edition from Kids Can Press
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Joke's on George
by Michael O. Tunnell; illustrated by Kathy Osborn
from Tambourine Books
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Leonardo da Vinci
by Norman V. Marshall
from Silver Burdett Press
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Librarian Who Measured the Earth
by Kathryn Lasky
from Little, Brown & Company
Biography for 2nd-5th grade
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$18.99 $12.00 (2 in stock)
Lindbergh
Classic Starts
by Torben Kuhlmann, Translated by David Henry Wilson
from NorthSouth
for 2nd-6th grade
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$19.95 $10.00 (1 in stock)
Linnea in Monet's Garden
by Christina Bjork & Lena Anderson
from R&S Books
Biography for Preschool- 3rd Grade
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Man Makes His World
by Patrick Lynch
from Edward Arnold
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Me on the Map
by Joan Sweeney, Illustrated by Qin Leng
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for Kindergarten-3rd grade
in Introductory Geography (Location: GEO-INTRO)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Metropolitan Opera Guide
by Mary Ellis Peltz and Robert Lawrence, illustrated by Alexandre Serebriakoff
7th edition from Modern Library
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Mike and Dick on a Washington Apple Farm
The Farm Life Series
by Joan Liffring
from Follett Publishing Co.
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$16.00 (1 in stock)
Military Uniforms, 1686-1918
A Grosset All-Color Guide
by Rene North, illustrated by John Berry
from Grosset & Dunlap
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
My Brothers' Flying Machine
by Jane Yolen
from Little, Brown & Company
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
My Librarian Is a Camel
by Margriet Ruurs
from Boyds Mill Press
for 1st-3rd grade
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
My Name is Georgia
from Harcourt, Brace & Company
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
October 45
by Jean-Louis Besson, translated by Carol Volk
from Harcourt Brace Jovanich
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in WWII: European Theater (Location: HISA-20WW2E)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
People in the Past
Dorling Kindersley Picturepedia
from DK Publishing
for 1st-3rd grade
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison
by David A. Adler, illustrated by John & Alexandra Wallner
from Holiday House
Picture Book Biography for 1st-3rd grade
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Portrait of a Farm Family
by Raymond Bial
from Houghton Mifflin
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Rare Treasure
by Don Brown
from Houghton Mifflin
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$16.00 (1 in stock)
Sailing the Unknown
by Michael Rosen, Illustrated by Maria Cristina Pritelli
from Creative Editions
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$10.00 (1 in stock)
Secret World of Walter Anderson
by Hester Bass, illustrated by E. B. Lewis
from Candlewick Press
for Kindergarten-2nd grade
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Songs to Grow On
by Beatrice Landeck, piano arrangements by Florence White, illustrated by David Stone Martin
from Edward B. Marks Music Corporation
for Kindergarten-6th grade
in Vintage Readers & Textbooks (Location: VIN-READ)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections: Man-of-War
by Stephen Biesty
from DK Publishing
for 1st-4th grade
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Story of the Incredible Orchestra
by Bruce Koscielniak
from HMH Books for Young Readers
for 1st-3rd grade
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Sweet Music in Harlem
by Debbie A. Taylor, Illustrated by Frank Morrison
from Lee & Low Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
The Amish
by Doris Faber, Illustrated by Michael E. Erkel
from Doubleday & Company
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in Cultural History (Location: HISMC-CUL)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Three Little Indians
by Gene S. Stuart, illustrations by Louis S. Glanzman
from National Geographic
for Preschool-2nd grade
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
UNICEF's Festival Book
by Judith Spiegelman, illustrated by Audrey Preissler
from UNICEF
for 2nd-5th grade
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Usborne Famous Composers Reference Book
by Anthony Marks
from Usborne
for 2nd-6th grade
in Music History (Location: ELE-MUSHIS)
$6.30 (1 in stock)
Usborne History of Science in 100 Pictures
by Abigail Wheatley, illustrated by Ian McNee
from Usborne
for 2nd-5th grade
in History of Science & Mathematics (Location: SCI-HIS)
$5.40 (1 in stock)
Visiting the Art Museum
by Laurine Krasny Brown & Marc Brown
from Child's Play Ltd.
for Kindergarten-2nd grade
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$7.50 (1 in stock)
What's Inside? Boats
What's Inside?
from DK Publishing
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
What's Inside? Great Inventions
What's Inside?
from DK Publishing
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$3.50 (1 in stock)
Who Invented This?
by Anne Ameri-Siemens, illustrated by Becky Thorns, translated by David Henry Wilson
from Little Gestalten
for 2nd-5th grade
in Inventions & Discoveries (Location: SCI-INV)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Writing it Down
by Vicki Cobb, Illustrated by Marylin Hafner
from J.B. Lippincott Co.
for 1st-3rd grade
in How Things Work (Location: SCIREF-HOW)
$7.00 (1 in stock)