Hello /r/AskHistorians, I'm here to ask a bit of a unique question. I messaged the mods and they suggested that this thread would be the best place to broach it. I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in history and am about to enter my student teaching next fall (which is the last step of becoming a credentialed teacher). I've been informed I will be teaching 7th grade World History. While I am familiar with some of the topics covered through my education, 7th grade history covers A LOT of different places and time periods some of which I did not have the luxury of taking classes about. I was hoping the experts here could recommend me some texts that would help me become as knowledgeable as possible about the content. The content standards for the grade are listed below. If you can please recommend a single volume overview that would best address each standard. Thank you for any suggestions you have, I'm really hoping to be as knowledgeable as possible about all the topics so I can focus on creating meaningful lessons for my students without worrying about what is it I'm actually teaching about.

7.1 Students analyze the causes and effects of the vast expansion and ultimate disintegration of the Roman Empire.

7.2 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.

7.3 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of China in the Middle Ages.

7.4 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the sub-Saharan civilizations of Ghana and Mali in Medieval Africa.

7.5 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Medieval Japan.

7.6 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Medieval Europe.

7.7 Students compare and contrast the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the Meso-American and Andean civilizations.

7.8 Students analyze the origins, accomplishments, and geographic diffusion of the Renaissance.

7.9 Students analyze the historical developments of the Reformation.

7.10 Students analyze the historical developments of the Scientific Revolution and its lasting effect on religious, political, and cultural institutions.

7.11 Students analyze political and economic change in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason).

It's been mostly primary sources for me this week, a bit of a break from searching out textbooks and well written pop history books for my project. I made my way through The Story of the Mongols, Who We Call Tartars and am halfway through The Recovery of the Holy Land. The Story of the Mongols is, quite apart from the interesting outsider look at Mongol culture, religion and personality, a good source on both their military capabilities and their equipment. Most importantly, it specifically confirms something I've been thinking for a long time: massed archery is the best way to deal with horse archers.

The Recovery of the Holy Land is considerably more "Pie in the Sky", as it were. Dubois put considerable time and effort into his plans for unifying Europe, but they very much relied on Papal authority being enough to prevent wars and that any who disobeyed the Pope would be quickly defeated. While religion was an enormous part of medieval life, I can't see most kingdoms easily submitting to th idea of a single Commonwealth.

On the other hand, Dubois had a largely practical idea about converting the Eastern Orthodox church to Catholicism: namely, marry beautiful, intelligent women trained in both theology and medicine off to prominent lay and clerical lords so that they could not only work on their husbands but also attract other women to them. There are also some nuggets about military strategy and Dubois' ideas for legal reform. It's an interesting mix of likely and unlikely ideas.

Been spending the day working on my senior thesis! Writing on the use of the gymnasium in Ancient Greece as an institution of social reproduction with a focus on male gender. I'd be lying if I said the theory threads haven't been a huge help to me over the past 4 years in learning how to do history.

The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan by Marcia Yonemoto is academically expensive, so waiting on my university library to get a copy, but UC Press has made available her first chapter on representations of female piety in the Edo Period.

https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/13261.ch1.pdf

and I am so amused and delighted at her documentation of how the popular literary models of those dutiful daughters shifted over the course of the Edo Period from self-sacrificing women who would let themselves be killed for the sake of their parents, to self-sacrificing women with swords who go kill their parents' enemies.

I am reading these days The origins of the modern world by Robert Marks. It is intended to be an intro to World history for undergrads. The author is a proponent of World-systems theory.

I'm halfway through it and so far I find it clearly written and easy to follow. I am however not convinced at all by the theories presented, There is very few detailed justifications, and factoids are thrown around as ad-hoc proof of the theory. Honestly it seems very unscientific to me. For a history book, the hodgepodge of empires spposedly connected together lacks arguments and periodization: trade in one part of the world is compared to trade 200 years later somewhere else, without much consideration for the validity of the comparisons.

Hi all. I'm wondering if anyone could point me to some books on classic learning in the early modern period, particularly in spain, as well as anything specifically about Caesar's Bellum Gallicum. Thanks!

Picked up 1493 today. Most of the reviews I'm finding talk about how good 1491 was. It was, but I mean what about 1493? Am I going to be disappointed? I was going to dive into the parts of 1491's bibliography that I haven't read yet (which is most of it), but I decided to give his other book a go first.

I also picked up The Wanderers by Meg Howrey because it's been too long since I read fiction and I miss it, but I guess that doesn't really belong here.

Anyway, should I manage my expectations for 1493?

Hello, I'm halfway through Anna Funder's Stasiland and whilst it's an entertaining read, it's also a bit light on actual experiences of living in the DDR. I'm not looking for a highly academic work (unless it's well written, I mean more in the sense of not really being in the mood right now to wade through a methodology and theory section). If there are any highly readable but still rigorous histories of the actual everyday experience of either the people or state employees of the DDR I would really appreciate a recommendation. Or a decent novel set there that's had the homework done, but that could be more hit and miss.

Thanks a lot.