The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective

I posted several weeks ago about my son's need of some new history books. We decided to purchase 'The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective" by Dan P. Hunter. We have been using this three volume set for a few weeks now. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this set of books.

At first, I was quite impressed with the various quotes and documentation included in this work. My concern comes in that so much of the book seems to quote "The First Two Thousand Years" by W. Cleon Skousen. I'm beginning to wonder if we should have just read his books and not purchased this set if it is going to do so much quoting, paraphrasing, and referring to this other work. Also, I am not completely convinced that Cleon Skousen's view on history is 100% correct, which would also make this work possibly not correct. However, not all the quotes are from this one work. There are scriptures and doctrinal books mentioned as well.

Another challenge with using this curriculum is that it has three volumes and each time period, or Epoch as it is called, is spread throughout each of the three volumes. We like to study our history sequentially and so we are having to go through each volume to finish each Epoch. Chris wanted to take the bindings apart and put them in the correct order to make it easier for him. I have not done that yet, I'm not sure if I will.

The proposed way to use this set is to go through one volume a year of each of the various sets, then repeat using the second volume. So a curriculum plan would look like this:

• Year 1 - The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 1
• Year 2 - The World After Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 1
• Year 3 - The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 2
• Year 4 - The World After Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 2
• Year 5 - The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 3
• Year 6 - The World Before Christ: An LDS Perspective - Volume 3
• Year 7 - United States History: An LDS Perspective - Volume 1
• Year 8 - United States History: An LDS Perspective - Volume 2
• Year 9 - Native American History: An LDS Perspective

Basically, a family would study each volume together and make their way through all of the volumes throughout your homeschool life. I do not feel these volumes could be read independently by children younger than 14, and even then, they need to be good readers. There are several references, books, videos, etc. listed in each volume as possible inclusions for each Epoch. We have had a hard time finding the videos listed in the book, so it is difficult to say if that is very helpful.

It looks as though Chris will go through more than one volume a year, simply because he loves history and wants to study it in depth. He is studying the scriptures along with the history books. I had hoped he would LOVE these books, but I think he likes them fine.