**This fun, quirky, and engaging fully illustrated history anthology
features twenty-five amazing and terrifying rulers for middle grade
readers to discover.
**We've heard of Alexander the Great. We've heard of Ivan the Terrible.
But what was so Great about Alexander? What was so Terrible about Ivan?
Spanning centuries of history in a culturally diverse framework-from
ancient India to nineteenth-century Hawaii, and with a balanced focus on
notorious women rulers as well as male, The Great and the Terrible
takes a humorous look at some of the most glorious and notorious figures
in history through the lens of the nicknames they're remembered by.
While some of the characters mentioned here are more prominent in world
history (Cyrus the Great introduced the world's first human rights
charter), others are well known only within their own cultures. The
Great and the Terrible gives middle-grade readers an opportunity to dip
into the breadth of world history, sampling its cultural diversity and
its stranger-than-fiction historical exploits, with a mix of the
sensational and the serious. It helps to correct the imbalance in many
history books that currently only focus on Western Civilization, shining
the spotlight on achievements (and foibles) in many different cultures.