Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC of this!

My kids and I really liked the first one in this series and I was very excited for this one! I thought it did a really good job going into the ramifications of storytelling and agriculture, both good and bad.

This book is a fabulous follow up to the first. I have the first volume and now will happily add this to the shelf and we will be using them as part of our homeschool curriculum next year when my son in 9. This book doesn't bog the reader down with date after date, it dives into the why things happened and the impact of those things instead. I think it will give him a more in depth view of history and honestly, it did the same for me. Harari is such a wonderful writer and if he wrote it, I'll read it. This volume, only cemented that fact. I think we would all do well if they were in most classrooms.

The illustrations in this book are also wonderfully done. They add detail and at times even a bit of playfulness that is perfect for this age group.

Kiddo (9) and I really really enjoyed the first book in this series, but we enjoyed this one even more. All other "history of the world" books that I have read get bogged down in dates and names and try to establish a chronological timeline of major world events.

This book, however, dispenses with all of that. It hardly mentions dates at all, nor does it mention names. What it does, and does incredibly well, is lay out the HOW and WHY of history.

Step by step it takes us through the how and why of the agricultural revolution and the growth of villages and towns and cities and kingdoms and religions. It takes us through the rise of priests and kings and the ways life for people who settled in villages differed from the lives of their hunter/gatherer neighbors.

My 9-year-old's mind was blown. I came away with an understanding of history I never managed to get from the date and name focused books.

I highly recommend reading this alongside or soon before or after a date-focused book. Kiddo and I followed this one with A Short History of the World by Ruth Brocklehurst, which does an admirable job detailing the chronological history of the world. Reading both offers a much better overall understanding of the who and when AND how and why of history and makes everything make a lot more sense.

The Unstoppable Us books are easily some of the best nonfiction books for kids we have come across and I highly, highly recommend them for kiddos age 9-12 who are interested in history. I also recommend reading them together as kiddo and I did because there's so much here that I (and probably many adults) never learned in school.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Bright Matter Books for providing an early copy for review.

A look into history from settling down into civilizations through Egypt. It makes it really approachable for kids, which I really loved. As a history teacher, I love how this book explained history and everything it included that is often left out. I’d definitely recommend for kids who are interested in the world!