How They Lived: An Annotated Tour of Daily Life through History in Primary Sources. By James Ciment. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2016. 2 vols. Acid free $205.00 (ISBN: 9788-1-61069-895-5). Ebook available (978-1-61069-896-2), call for pricing.
How They Lived: An Annotated Tour of Daily Life through History in Primary Sources is an excellent two-volume set to start upper elementary, middle-grade, and even early high school students on the path to discovering the excitement and value of primary sources. Ciment, an independent scholar, has crafted a tool that is fairly unique in the field: introducing younger researchers to primary sources from ancient times to the present day. How They Lived uses both objects and documents, which will grab the interest of younger students.
Entries are arranged chronologically, with the first entry a photo of Australian cave paintings from around 40000 BCE. Each entry opens with an image of the artifact and its provenance on the left, followed by interpretations on the next page. These begin with “What You Need to Know,” providing background information and a description, often including additional information on the maker or author and placing it in time and space. The second box is “A Closer Look,” which establishes a wider context, for instance describing how a mortar and pestle reflect the growth of agrarian societies and the development of agriculture, as well as human brain evolution. At the bottom of each pair of pages is a time line, indicating the time period of the subject under discussion.
The first volume covers sources from the ancient and medieval world, with the second volume beginning with 1500 CE. In addition to photographs, one-page documents lead readers to discover, among a host of other topics, how ancient Romans felt about being stood up for dinner (Pliny the Younger was not pleased), how estates were managed in England in 1280 CE, and how St. Petersburg, Russia, was constructed in 1703. The original sources are cited, allowing readers to locate the entire document. The index is extensive and very detailed. Egypt alone covers almost ten inches of column space and nearly an entire page is devoted to England.
Other titles on primary sources for the juvenile audience do exist, of course, but they lack the breadth and scope of this work. Most other works cover a specific time or topic, such as the Holocaust, the reign of Elizabeth I, or a region. How They Lived also notably devotes significant coverage to non-Western civilizations.
Teachers and librarians or media specialists could supplement How They Lived with websites from various museums and archives, such as the Library of Congress and the British Museum. The British Museum, for example, has a curriculum section which features “Teaching History with 100 objects” (www.teachinghistory100.org), which would work nicely with this title. This kind of pairing would enhance most lessons and assignments.
ABC-CLIO/Greenwood have other titles in the Daily Life through History series, such as Gregory Aldrete’s Daily Life in the Roman City (Greenwood 2004), and Claudia Durst Johnson’s Daily Life in Colonial New England (Greenwood 2002), but these cover specific times or events and only a very few are aimed at younger researchers.
This title is highly recommended for public libraries, school media centers, and university collections, where it would make a good starting point for undergraduates and non-history majors, as well as collections focused on teacher training.—Carla Wilson Buss, Curriculum Materials and Education Librarian, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia