Tim Cooke

This book was very misleading. It looked like it would be an easy picture book biography with fun illustrations, but it ended up being overly wordy for a young audience. It was full of information about Williams Shakespeare's life, plays, and sonnets, but each page was filled with multiple paragraphs of information. This is not something I would share with an elementary level class. This book would actually be helpful for high school students writing an essay on Shakespeare, although it show more looks like a children's book. The illustrations and the information provided are conflicting when it comes to deciding which age group to present this to. show less

Well-written accounts of famous and not so famous mistakes and disasters through history. Arranged chronologically from the "bent" pyramid to the banking crisis of 2008. Maps are the primary illustrations, with a few additional photos for each account.

The author is precise in his examinations of each event as to cause and effect. "Mistakes," in his definition, are preventable and the result of human carelessness, ineptitude, ignorance, laziness, or some combination. "Disasters," especially show more natural disasters, are not of human origin, but human failures often made them worse.

This is not a long book (220 pages), but it is far-ranging, both through history and through different types of event. There are battle mistakes, religious mistakes, economic mistakes, natural disasters, building disasters, cultural disasters. Recommended. show less

I enjoyed reading this book. It describes the layout so that students are able to understand the sections on each page which included: guiding questions, facts, and other information. It gave great pictures and artifacts for students to read about that pertain to the content of each page.

In this book, we learn a lot about Ancient Egypt. We are told everything from pyramid designs and pharaohs to food and their wildlife. If you know nothing about Egypt, you would come out full of new information after reading this book.