History of the World Series (Susan Wise Bauer)

Susan Wise Bauer's four-volume adult history series. Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern, is not a homeschool curriculum. It is a general-trade W.W. Norton history shelf that has been quietly adopted as the standard high-school spine in classical and Great Books homeschool programs. The books are genuinely excellent and genuinely not designed for teenagers.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical / literature-based / primary-source narrative
Worldview	Secular (treats religious movements as historical forces without confessional stance)
Grades	9-12 (college-capable high school readers)
Formats	Print hardcover and paperback (trade publishing)
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3 (student is self-directed if prepared; parent discusses)
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No (trade books, not curriculum)
Established	First volume published 2007 by W.W. Norton
Website	welltrainedmind.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Extensive primary-source integration, footnoted, college-level prose
Ease of teaching	2	No teacher's guide, no questions, no assessment structure, it is a history book
Content quality	5	Among the most well-regarded one-author world histories in print
Flexibility	5	Pairs with any classical, Great Books, or primary-source-based program
Value for money	4	Four hardcovers totaling $150-200; library access available
Worldview scope	4	Secular but respectful; usable across faith traditions
Visual/design	4	Clean Norton trade design; maps and genealogical tables integrated
Support resources	2	No publisher-issued study guide; families build their own or use Well-Trained Mind forums

Who the publisher is

The series author, Susan Wise Bauer, is a historian with a Ph.D. from the College of William & Mary, where she taught writing and literature for many years. She is best known in homeschool circles as the co-author (with her mother, Jessie Wise) of The Well-Trained Mind, the book that introduced a generation of American homeschool families to the classical trivium and effectively created the modern classical-homeschool movement. She also wrote Story of the World, the four-volume elementary narrative history that is the companion piece to the adult series under review here. The two series are frequently confused; they are not the same books and are pitched at different audiences.

The History of the World series itself is published by W.W. Norton & Company, the long-established independent trade publisher, not by Bauer's own Well-Trained Mind Press. This matters for tone and positioning. Norton is not a homeschool publisher and did not design these books for students. They are adult trade histories, marketed to general readers and academic libraries, written at a level that assumes vocabulary, sentence-parsing endurance, and cultural literacy consistent with an educated adult reader. Bauer's prose is clear and engaging, but the books are not condescending to younger readers and do not scaffold the reading experience.

The four volumes are The History of the Ancient World (2007), The History of the Medieval World (2010), The History of the Renaissance World (2013), and The History of the Early Modern World (forthcoming at this writing; Bauer has published progress updates through the Well-Trained Mind community but the fourth volume has been in development for longer than many readers expected). The first three are each approximately 800 pages in hardcover, heavily footnoted with both primary and secondary sources, and include maps and rulers-of-the-world chronological tables.

The core pedagogy

The Bauer series is not pedagogy; it is content. That is its greatest strength and its structural challenge for homeschool use. The method Bauer employs is narrative history, a running chronological account of rulers, wars, ideas, and cultures across the entire known world simultaneously, moving decade by decade rather than civilization by civilization. A chapter may cover a 50-year span in Tang China, Carolingian France, and the Abbasid Caliphate in sequence, tracing how events in one region echo or ignore events in another.

This structure is unusual. Most world histories organize by civilization: a few hundred pages on Rome, a few hundred on medieval Europe, a few hundred on China. Bauer refuses this organization. Her thesis, stated explicitly in the introduction to the Ancient World volume, is that world history has to be told as a single narrative because the civilizations were never actually separate, they traded, fought, borrowed, and learned from one another from the earliest periods for which we have records. The payoff is a reading experience in which a student grasps the simultaneity of the ancient and medieval worlds in a way that chapter-by-civilization histories rarely achieve.

Signature mechanics: (1) Single-narrative global scope, no region is treated in isolation. (2) Heavy reliance on primary sources, most chapters quote from the historical figures themselves in translation, often at length. (3) Neutral treatment of religion as a historical force. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and indigenous traditions are described as they appear in the historical record, without editorial commentary on their truth claims. (4) Extensive footnoting, academic rather than popular citation practice, which allows a student researching an essay topic to trace claims to sources. (5) No pedagogical apparatus, no comprehension questions, no study guides, no test banks. The books assume the reader and teacher will do their own work.

A day in the life

A tenth-grader using Bauer's History of the Ancient World as the history spine in a classical Great Books sequence opens to Chapter 37 at 1:00 PM. The assigned reading is 18 pages, covering a half-century of the Persian Empire and the early Warring States period in China. The student reads for 45 to 60 minutes, marking unfamiliar names in the margin, noting the primary-source quotations that will appear in the week's paper assignment. At the end, the student writes a one-paragraph summary in a reading notebook, a practice recommended in the Well-Trained Mind methodology, and looks up any geography mentioned that the student cannot place on a mental map.

Twice a week, the student discusses the reading with a parent or tutor for 20 to 30 minutes. The discussion is unscripted; some families use the questions in The Well-Educated Mind (Bauer's companion guide to reading classical texts), some use Great Books discussion frameworks, some develop their own rolling set of questions. Once every two weeks, the student writes a 500- to 1,000-word paper on a specific figure, event, or primary source from the reading, using Bauer's text as the starting point and at least one external primary source (Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Sima Qian) read in translation. This pattern, reading, summary, discussion, paper, is the standard Great Books integration and is the reason the Bauer series has been adopted as a spine rather than used as a standalone textbook.

What they do exceptionally well

Prose quality and readability. Bauer writes better prose than most academic historians and better than almost any other history author in print at this scope. Students who expect history textbooks to be dry discover that Bauer's narrative carries them forward. This alone sets the series apart from comparable university-level world history texts.

Primary source integration. The books quote primary sources at length in almost every chapter. Herodotus, Tacitus, Ibn Khaldun, Bede, the Hebrew prophets, Confucius, Augustine, and hundreds of others, in translations Bauer has selected and footnoted. A student who reads the full series has been extensively exposed to the actual voices of the historical figures, not just to an author describing them from the outside.

Respectful secular register. The books are secular in approach but not anti-religious. Bauer, who is herself a practicing Christian, writes about religious figures and movements with factual neutrality and historical seriousness. This makes the series uniquely usable across homeschool worldview communities. Catholic classical schools, Reformed Protestant Great Books programs, secular humanist family co-ops, and Orthodox Jewish high school programs have all adopted the Bauer series as their world history spine without needing to edit or supplement.

Geographic scope. The series treats Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania with the same attention and narrative detail as it treats Europe and the Mediterranean. A student who reads Bauer learns about Axum, the Khmer Empire, the Tang, the Mayas, the Mongol succession crises, and the Ottoman expansion as standard content rather than as brief appendices to a Europe-centered story. Few general-audience world histories at this rigor maintain this balance.

What they do poorly

The pedagogical void. There is no teacher's guide. There are no comprehension questions. There are no tests. There are no assigned writing prompts. A family using Bauer must build the entire scaffolding themselves or adopt a third-party framework such as Memoria Press's classical high school schedule or the discussion methodologies in Wes Callihan's Old Western Culture series. Families without a parent willing to do this work almost always fail to use the Bauer series effectively.

The fourth volume is not finished. As of April 2026, the series is three volumes deep, with the fourth volume, covering the Early Modern through late nineteenth-century period, still in development. Families planning a full four-year high school sequence built entirely on Bauer will run out of book before the end of eleventh or twelfth grade. Most classical high school programs address this by pairing the existing Bauer volumes with other texts (Will Durant, J.M. Roberts) for the unwritten period.

Reading level assumes preparation. The books are written at a college-level vocabulary and syntactic complexity. A ninth-grader who has not been reading classical literature consistently through middle school will struggle. The Bauer series works best as the capstone of a classical education, not as the entry point. Families whose students have been on less demanding history programs through middle school should expect a bridging year before the series becomes accessible.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick the Bauer series if: you are running a classical or Great Books high school sequence and need a rigorous world history spine; you have a self-directed reader at or above grade level; you are willing to build or adopt your own discussion and assessment framework; you want a secular narrative that remains respectful of religious traditions; you value primary-source integration and extensive footnotes.

• Skip the Bauer series if: you want a complete curriculum with teacher's guide, tests, and answer keys; your student struggles with dense adult prose; you need coverage through the present (the fourth volume is not yet published); you prefer a civilization-by-civilization structure over Bauer's simultaneous-global approach; you want a distinctly confessional treatment of religious history rather than a secular-respectful one.

Cost honest assessment

Hardcover editions of the three completed volumes run approximately $37 to $45 each at list price per W.W. Norton's catalog as of April 2026, with paperback editions at roughly $22 to $28 each. A student buying the three completed volumes in paperback runs approximately $70-85 all in for the full available set. Most families supplement with used copies through AbeBooks or library access, bringing the effective cost lower.

Compared to Notgrass History (roughly $130-160 per year for a complete Christian world history curriculum with teacher's guide and student packets) or Tapestry of Grace (which is a multi-subject curriculum including but not limited to history, at $170-250 per year), Bauer looks less expensive on the shelf. The hidden cost is parental time. A family choosing Bauer is saying "we will build our own questions, discussions, and assessments." Families who do not have time for that find Bauer more expensive per usable hour than the all-in-one alternatives.

ESA eligibility notes

Because Bauer's History of the World series is trade hardcovers rather than curriculum, ESA eligibility varies by state program. States with open book-purchase categories (Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's MyScholarShop) typically accept trade non-fiction through the authorized marketplaces. States with more narrowly defined curriculum-only programs sometimes require the books be purchased through a homeschool vendor rather than a general bookseller; Well-Trained Mind Press and Rainbow Resource both carry the series and serve as approved ESA vendors on multiple state programs. Families should verify state-specific vendor approval before ordering. Well-Trained Mind's ESA guidance is updated periodically.

Alternatives

• Notgrass History: Exploring World History, a family would pick Notgrass over Bauer for a complete one-year world history curriculum with daily lessons, teacher guides, and tests, in an explicitly Christian narrative frame.
• Tapestry of Grace, a family would pick Tapestry over Bauer for a fully-developed classical integrated-humanities program that places world history inside a four-year great books sequence with pre-built discussion questions and writing prompts.
• Old Western Culture, a family would pick Callihan's video course over Bauer for a narrated great-books-focused sequence taught on video that covers the classical and medieval material Bauer covers in prose.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the W.W. Norton catalog pages for each published volume, the Well-Trained Mind author page for author background and series positioning, and the introductions and tables of contents of all three published volumes. We cross-referenced series adoption against the Well-Trained Mind community forums, Classical Conversations high school scope documents, and published classical homeschool reading lists from Memoria Press and Veritas Press. Prices and publication details verified April 2026.