The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution (The Cartoon History of the Modern World, #1) by Larry Gonick

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution (The Cartoon History of the Modern World, #1) Reviews

• 
  Katherine 黄爱芬

  Kartun ini lucu dan lumayan sarkastik.
  
  Mengetengahkan sejarah kolonisasi orang² Eropa yg mengeksploitir terutama benua Amerika. Termasuk diawali dgn sejarah suku² Indian juga.
  
  Dari buku ini saya jadi paham asal mula perseteruan Spanyol vs Portugal, lalu Inggris vs Perancis. Gak ketinggalan Italia dan paus²nya yg korup.
  
  Perang Agama gak ketinggalan dijabarkan dlm buku ini. Begitu pula asal mula mengapa India bisa dijajah dan berpindah tangan antara satu negara Eropa ke negara Eropa lainnya.
  
  Penjelasan sejarah di buku ini memang gak mendetil tapi intisarinya dijelaskan cukup rinci. Jadi saya paham peralihan suksesi dinasti di Perancis abad 15-16. Atau siapa Philip II itu, suami Queen Mary dari Inggris dan sepak terjangnya. Tapi yg menarik dan lumayan koplak adalah petualangan Cortez dlm menaklukkan sebagian besar benua Amerika krn kelicikan dan ambisinya. Ternyata dibalik semua itu ada seorang wanita haus darah yg mendampinginya sehingga Cortez dijuluki Malinche.
  
  Buku ini ditutup dgn Kemerdekaan Amerika Serikat. Sayang buku kartun ini cuma ada jilid 1. Jadi pengen cari.
• 
  Evan Dewangga

  Membaca komik menjadi salah satu terapi saya saat menghadapi reading slump. Dan benar saja, komik ini, meski sulit untuk dibaca, mengantarkan saya kembali ke perjalanan sejarah dunia, topik yang selalu saya suka.
  
  Awalnya saya clueless saat membahas koloni-koloni Spanyol di Amerika atau Kesultanan Mughal. Saya memang kurang akrab dengan sejarah India ataupun Amerika Latin. Namun begitu menyentuh masa Renaissance hingga kemerdekaan Amerika Serikat, saya mulai bisa mengikuti tempo buku ini yang terbilang cepat. Di tiap kesempatan, selalu ada highlight mengenai tokoh penulis yang berjasa mengubah zaman itu. Dari Hobbes, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Locke, saya serasa diajak tur buku dan pemikiran oleh mereka.
  
  Alih-alih digunakan sebagai pengantar sejarah, saya rasa buku ini lebih tepat dibaca untuk me-refresh wawasan tentang sejarah yang sebelumnya sudah dimiliki pembaca. Banyak peristiwa dipadatkan hanya dalam sedikit panel komik, sudah seperti sekedar timeline sejarah saja terkadang, tanpa penjelasan rinci. Pengantar sejarah yang lebih mudah dimengerti dan asyik saya kira sudah bersliweran di jagad maya, seperti kanal Crash Course ataupun situs Khan Academy.
• 
  Paul Schulzetenberg

  I'll praise Gonick's Cartoon History of the World series to everybody who will listen. As a history buff and a thoughtful comics fan, this series exists at a perfect intersection for me, and I think that anybody with even a passing interest in one or the other will find this illuminating.
  
  Of course, the usual caveats apply. Nearly 300 years is a lot of ground to cover, and there are things that are left out that I wish had been included. What's more, the format encourages a certain amount of flippancy, which means that if you prefer your history dignified and dusty, this book won't appeal to you.
  
  But the same style means that the book is incredibly successful. This is a highlight reel of history, which means you get a very zoomed out, highly contextual view of history. It's useful to understand how Charles V is simultaneously balancing the New World and the old, or how the Dutch revolt has ties affecting Indian politics. If you're looking for an overview of history, you aren't going to find much better or more accessible than this.
• 
  Jill

  Neat book, I gave it an Ok rating because it just didn't keep my attention. While it does a nice job giving account of various events, every little quote wasn't exactly historically accurate.
  
  I went into it thinking this could be a great book for elementary aged kids studying history, but when page 3 had some promiscuous egyptians saying things like "talk dirty to me some more" I started to change my mind. And Did Martin Luther really say "the pope's a pig and the church is a whore"? Seemed to me like there was a lot of little additions by the author on historical events in an effort to just bring characters to life.
  
  Also, lots of nudie people walking around. I don't have a problem with it, but I could see some parents maybe wanting to have their kids return it to the library. Just a heads up for someone who may think this book is great for younger kids.
  
  Id recommend it more for young adults.
• 
  Doc Opp

  The Cartoon history of the universe was my high school history text. It was a great text. Not only was it full of history - but funny. And a lot of interesting asides which filled my desire for esoteric trivia.
  
  I saw the Modern World book and bought it for nostalgia's sake. It didn't disappoint. I learned more about Inca history from the 30 pages of cartoons in this book than I did from my two week trip to Peru. I finally understand the history of the 100 year war. Got a really nice review of the differences between different protestant sects. Learned the origins and philosophies of the Sikhs, which I'd never known. And was entertained the entire time. I also added a great deal to my reading list of the important books that influenced thought.
  
  I wish they had a cartoon history of psychology - I'd assign it to my students...
• 
  Reenie

  As fun as all the others in this series, this book is both highly amusing and a really good grounding in a lot of key developments of the beginning of the modern era. It won't replace actually reading normal history books, but it'll give you a lot of background that might otherwise be missing. There's a heavy focus on the Americas and Europe, with a few detours into India, but I suspect that the next volume will feature other areas more prominently, given what Gonick has done before in rotating regions from book to book. He's definitely not afraid to draw comparisons and raise eyebrows at how past events relate to current ones, which may end up dating this book quite badly since there's a lot of clear references to Dubya's America. Still, there's a lot to be said for doing things with cartoon format, which makes that sort of thing much less annoying than it would otherwise be.
• 
  Sbuchler

  Genre: non-fiction, history, tongue-in-cheek history...
  
  I didn't find this as much fun as the Cartoon History of the Universe trilogy... despite the fact that it picks up where the previous series left off... I think it tried to fit too much in too few pages. It was much more choppy then the other cartoon histories, and I don't think it drew connections as clearly. There are better overviews to Early Modern history then this, although it does have the benefit of not focusing solely on Europe, which is a failing of most overviews. (This is compared to the earlier books, which I thought were some of the best overviews of Antiquity and Medieval history I'd encountered - as well as being amusing and fun to read).
  
• 
  Fira Nursya'bani

  Cerita buku ini yang disajikan dalam bentuk kartun sangat mudah dipahami. Terutama, apalagi, buku ini bercerita tentang peradaban modern dunia yang notabene merupakan sejarah penting mengenai, salah satunya, terbukanya jalur perdagangan dari Eropa ke Asia. Bermula dari Columbus yang mendarat di Amerika namun mengiranya India, hingga pembagian dua wilayah dunia oleh Paus pada masa itu kepada Portugis dan Spanyol yang sedang 'bertengkar'. Menggelikan.
  
  "Penguasa yang hati-hati tak perlu memegang janjinya sendiri jika itu bertentangan dengan kepentingannya."
  -Machiavelli, Politikus Firenze, Italia
• 
  Dave

  "Wickedly funny"? No, but peppered throughout with snickers. A few times the jokes missed the mark, but the book was overall entertaining and readable. The outlook was left-leaning and cynical (Howard Zinn-lite), but I don't up or downgrade on that issue, I only want to convey that in a review since I'd like to know that orientation before I pick up a book. I agree with another reviewer that it got a little muddled at times, though European politics is not easy to make clear with the regime changes and shifting alliances and inbred monarchies. The take-away however is that I learned quite a bit, the artwork was inviting and most telling of all I'd read another in the series.
• 
  Abigail Rhee

  The Cartoon History of the Modern World is an interesting change from the usual textbook styles of history books. The different approach makes it easier to read the book but also a bit strange since you see all these gruesome scenes of history laid bare in the panels of the cartoons.
  Despite the easy style in which readers can view the history of the world I think that it would be smarter just to read a normal textbook.
  No one’s going to focus if dirty jokes are hidden in the story.
  Also I personally think that the history of the world can be taught in interesting ways to make people enjoy leaning it but this comic book didn’t do the greatest job in the world.
  The graphic novel was literally a textbook with a ton of very interestingly drawn pictures. A lot of the text was relevant to the panels but mostly it was just text carrying on and on with pictures to distract the reader.
  Another thing is that the author’s writing style was quite strange, speaking about history but in turn making those famous people of the past look ridiculous and ignorant, and there was a lot of random details that were probably meant to be funny but didn’t amuse me.
  The Cartoon History of the Modern World, being a comic book, was probably meant to keep the reader’s interest and attention because of it’s different writing style but it wasn’t much better than the average textbook. While reading my attention drifted so often that I found myself closing the book and staring at the wall for a few moments before opening the book again.
• 
  CL De Rekla Zykrona

  I'm not really sure what to think about this book. It was fun to read and interesting. This was a interesting comic book that did actually give a lot of information. This comic gave information at where the natives of the America's were doing stuff. Living, fighting, arguing, etc.
  It keeps going to show when the Europeans came to try to find gold and other things. It keeps going to show the problems of the Spanish and other Europeans fighting over the Americas a little. Shows how lots of people are fighting and dragging natives into the fight. Then it shows the wars that happen not in the Americas but in the European countries. It shows the problems the pope has and some of the other kings.
  Then it shows what started to happen at North America with the Europeans this time trying to befriend the Indians. Then it shows what the Americans started to do.
  This book showed a lot of fighting. I liked that part of this book. I'll be reading the second one later so I hope that it is also as entertaining as this one.
• 
  Anthony Faber

  A very annoying thing about this book is that there are asterisks all over the place, but not a foot or end note in sight, so I have no idea what they're for. This actually starts out with a brief summary of pre-Columbian civilizations in Central & South America (which are usually given short shrift in history survey courses) then their colonization then hops to India and looks at the origin of Sikhism (another thing not covered) and the stuff happening there, then focuses on Europe until a bit on their colonies and the American Revolution at the end.
  
• 
  Ray Dunsmore

  An alright skim through the major events in world history from the first civilizations in Mexico to the founding of the United States. Take it as it is - a book very obviously written on the tail end of the second W. Bush administration - and it's pretty good for its time. Could it stand to improve from a modern perspective? Like all nearly 20 year old Eurocentric historical texts, yeah, it would.
• 
  H

  In general, I disliked and was disappointed in these cartoon histories. There was too much information, not enough maps, and textbooks told a clearer, better tale of the periods of time. The cartoon drawings just didn't improve the experience and hampered it, fragmented and not as smooth to read.
• 
  John

  If you're searching for an amusing introduction to the history of the Western world and the major events and philosophers who impacted it from the late 15th to the 18th century, this book does a great job making it both fun and understandable.
• 
  Anas

  Komik yang sangat padat informasi, saking padatnya sehingga banyak bagian terkesan sangat "melompat-lompat". Dengan guyonan sarkastik khas Larry Gonick, Kartun Riwayat Peradaban ini cukup memberi gambaran "keterhubungan" berbagai peristiwa dalan sejarah dunia.
• 
  Lindsey

  Not suitable for kids but yet a different way to read about history, albeit, a bloody history filled with death, corruption and a little bit of levity.
• 
  Grant

  Gonick's illustrations and humor are spot on, though world history has moved a bit past the highly-Eurocentric focus.
• 
  Andika Lesmana

  Final: American Revolution and U.S. Constitution
• 
  Oktavianti

  Buku komik yang padat sekali isinya.
• 
  Muhammad Arief Akbar

  Bagus seprti jilid 1 dan 3.
• 
  Bon Kim

  THis book was fun. I enjoyed reading it. I learned about history from when Columbus discovered America to the revolutionary war.
• 
  Elena

  I wonder what readers will think in 30 years time when they pick up this volume and read all the snarky iraq war references? "Gee, why'd the french call that a shock and awe campaign?" Probably we'll have invaded someone else by that point, but still. Gonick's sly humor is a little less sly this time around. And more dated, for sure.
  The Onion's book review characterized the artwork on this book as more hurried than the Cartoon History of the Universe volumes. I'd have to disagree, and say that the history is at times a bit rushed. More so than the CHU I, which gets from the Big Bang to Alexander the Great in 350 pages? Well, no, but there is a lot more to go by in terms of textual references this time around. And my understanding of much of the history he's talking about is more nuanced, so I am going to be nit-picky with this one. I know you don't like the "white myth" of the Spaniards in America, Gonick, and I also know that I'm a historian, but diseases did play a pretty significant role in the Conquest of the Americas. You talk about the fall of the Inca empire and fail to mention that Huayna Capac probably died of small pox? It doesn't make all the raping, burning, killing, and enslaving that the Spanish actually committed irrelevant to realize that genocide can have biological contributers too. That's just an example from my own little corner of history. Maybe what I would have liked was a bit more of a disclaimer that history is contradictory and biased, and you can't be sure of anything. The first couple of pages, for that very reason, were some of my favorites. In the rest of the book Gonick makes some statements that seem pretty matter-of-fact in instances where there is actually still a lot of debate. Nonetheless, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. He can sure tell a story, and I love the bibliographies and humorous judgments. Keep writing!
• 
  Orion

  Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1 is divided into five volumes or chapters. It picks up where his 3 volume Cartoon History of the Universe (from the Big Band to the Renaissance) leaves off. For a humorous and popular account, Gonick's Cartoon Histories can not be beat. While telling the big story, his comic book style finds the quirky humor in the personalities of history.
  
  Volume 1, War of the Worlds, starts with Native American Pre-Columbian history and tells the story of early Spanish conquest by Columbus and Cortes of what we now know as the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. Volume 2, What Goes Around, looks at the rivalry between Spain and Portugal as they send ships out to explore and colonize the world. In Volume 3, Good Works, Gonick returns to Europe and takes on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response. Here the focus is on King Carlos V of Spain who ruled much of Europe in the 16th Century. With Volume 4, The United ___ of ___, Gonick looks at The Age of Enlightenment and the birth of Netherlands (aka the United Provinces of the Netherlands) with its non-royal governing and religious tolerance as a precursor of the USA. The final chapter, Volume 5 "Let's Be Reasonable", shows how the Age of Enlightenment and the conquest of North America develops into the beginning of the USA. He ends the book with a 5 page Index and a 4 page listing of Books, Sites, Etc. with notes on recommended further reading.