TOS Review: Heritage History

The mission of Heritage History is to make old fashion history books written for the enjoyment of young people easily available.  "At Heritage History, we seek to promote, not so much the study of history as the enjoyment of History. By making available old-fashioned history, as it was enjoyed as a pastime rather than studied as a subject, we hope to help reawaken the interest of a new generation."

Heritage History's online library allows you to read each one of their over 400 titles online free.  They are not only sorted by genre, author, series, and civilization, they are also color coded according to difficulty.  Green links are for introductory books, brown links for middle school, and red links for high school.  In addition to the books you can find thousands of historical images, a database of historical characters, and a complete battle dictionary.

In addition to their online library,  to make reading their books possible away from the computer, Heritage History has arranged their books onto CDs.  Each CD contains 3 versions of every book: printable PDF, MOBI for Kindle, and EPUB for any other ereader or tablet.  They have 4 different Library CD's: Early America, Spanish Empire, Christian Europe, and Modern Europe that each contain dozens of books from a 4th grade reading level to college prep.  They also have Classical Curriculum on CD.  Each curriculum CD includes biographies, hero stories, legends, historical literature, comprehensive histories, and a Teacher's Guide including timelines, historical maps and era summaries in printable format.  Their are 5 libraries offered as complete curriculum: Young Reader's, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, British Middle Ages, and the British Empire. We received the Young Reader's Classical Curriculum to use and review.

The Young Readers Classical Curriculum represents a broad introduction to Western Civilization including the subjects of American, European, and Ancient History, Bible and saint stories, legends and literature.  The 86 books included in the collection are intended to be read by an older grammar school student, but they also make great read alouds for younger students.  Instead of containing comprehensive histories they contain shorter stories selected to appeal to younger children.  The CD includes the complete illustrated text of 86 books, as well as timelines, reading recommendations, short biographies, historical images, and a ready to print teacher's guide.  If you prefer to have a printed bound Teacher's Guide, those are available as well for $20.99   After reading a few dozen of these books your child will be exposed to hundreds of historical figures and will have an excellent foundation for future studies.

Each CD in the Classical Curriculum series is $24.99 or you can buy the entire set for $99.99.  To order click here. The Library CDs are $19.99 each and can be found here.  You also have the option of purchasing e books separately.  Heritage History also provides links to their available print books.

Check the website for specials!  At the time of writing this is the current special.  You can also register to win a Kindle Fire here.

Heritage History is one of those companies that after seeing their website and working on my review I wondered how it is possible that I haven't heard of them sooner.  I was so impressed with the website and their Classical Curriculum CDs.  I LOVE that you get all three versions of every book: PDF, MOBI, and EPUB giving you the ability to print if you want to or load onto multiple devices.  Loading the books onto my Nook Color was very easy and the books look wonderful!  Heritage History is not curriculum specific.  It can be added to any curriculum you are using, or used on its own.  We used it to go along with some f the lessons taught with Mystery of History.  The Teacher's Guide is full of interesting and useful information.  I especially enjoyed  the section How Children Learn History.

I rarely comment about about price when I am writing a review, simply because cost is so subjective. What I believe is very expensive may seen inexpensive to my readers.  I do believe that with Heritage History (especially if you take advantage of one of their sales) that it is very affordable. Now that I have the Young Reader's Collection, I need to go back and order some of the others for my High Schooler.

To see what other crew mates had to say click here. 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of The Young Readers Classical Curriculum CD from Heritage History for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation.