TruthQuest History: Age of Revolution III by Michelle Miller covers the history of America and Europe from 1865-2000+. Geared toward 5^th-12^th grade students, it can be purchased in either a digital format or spiral bound. The spiral-bound book has 391 pages. The digital download has 408 pages. There is also an optional download of 136 pages consisting of Notebook Pages that supplements the curriculum.

TruthQuest History is written from a Biblical worldview. The two guiding questions, referred to as the Big 2 Beliefs, throughout the text are these: “Who is God?” and “Who, then, is mankind?”  These questions aim to help the student view history through a Biblical lens.

To aid the student in looking at history through the Big 2 Beliefs, there are questions called ThinkWrite.There are five ThinkWrite questions throughout the text to guide the student in thinking about how an individual’s or society's belief or disbelief in God, shaped their thinking and therefore the course of history. The first ThinkWrite is an organizational chart the student will fill in with God’s truth and the modern untruths in several different categories. It is meant to be an ongoing assignment. The remaining four can be answered with a paragraph or two and are spread throughout the book.

TruthQuest History is organized to work well with living books, which we really like. The author gives a brief history of the topics in each section and then supplies a list of different resources to dig deeper and learn more. The variety of resources includes biographies, autobiographies, historical fiction, fiction, audio, and movies. The resources also give the suggested age range they would be appropriate for, including occasional notes for when a parent may wish to preview it first.

The author does list a few books that can be used as a spine, but the curriculum itself is made to function as a spine for a history curriculum with other books added in to give depth. We did choose to buy one of the recommended spine books since we were using this for high school as the suggested spine went more in-depth on the topics covered. If I was using this for middle school, I would not have felt the need to have an additional spine.

Each section is also broken into different subsections, each with its own list of resources. Occasionally, there will be an additional summary of a specific subsection as well.

This layout works well for allowing a student to choose what they wish to learn about based on interest. History is so expansive that one cannot possibly learn everything. This curriculum hits all the highlights while directing you on where to look to learn more about the selected topics of your choice.

Ample choices are given to help guide you through history using what resources you have available to you. Despite the myriad choices given, there were some sections where we had a challenging time finding books. I am uncertain if the topics my daughter was interested in were simply not popular at our library, or if they are truly difficult to acquire, but there were topics that she either skipped because we couldn’t find any of the listed books, or she chose based on what our library had available even if they weren’t on the list.  However, there is such a vast number of other topics to cover, that it really was not an issue to just move on to a second or third choice. The author does mark books known to be in print to help with decision making.

The information is presented in a conversationalist tone, with the author writing to the student. This does help to make the presentation of information more appealing to youth. My daughter did mention that there were times where she felt she was reading more the authors opinion on history as opposed to just receiving information on what occurred. This is because the author is trying to explain how and why certain events occurred based on her Big 2 Beliefs. While the author’s opinions are present, I did not feel they were distracting or overbearing.

The supplemental Notebook Pages are wide lined with simple black and white illustrations that follow along with the main topics in the text. They will appeal more towards the 5^th-8^th grade, but could certainly be used by high school students, if they were interested. They would be extremely helpful in collecting notes from both the main text and additional resources used and are a fantastic way to organize the information. If you incorporate notebooking in your homeschool, then you will like the supplemental material.

What I liked the best about this curriculum was its adaptability. It can just as easily be used for a fifth grader as it can for a high school student. It easily allows students to follow their interests while at the same time getting an overview of each topic. Even multiple students working through the material simultaneously could have a unique and customizable learning experience based on what subjects within each topic they were interested in learning more about.

The curriculum is not writing intensive, which we liked, but there are opportunities for papers if you wish to add them.

I would recommend TruthQuest History: Age of Revolution III to homeschoolers who enjoy using a living books approach to subjects and are looking for a World History course with a Biblical worldview.

--Product review by Destiny Mawson, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2019