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Rating: 
Summary: Gets you thinking outside the box
Review: I only recently discovered Jean Fritz, and with each of her books that my daughter and I read together, I continue to be more and more impressed with her writing skills. She has the ability to bring history and historical figures to life and look at events with a fresh perspective. Around the World in a Hundred Years tells the stories of how Europeans came to discover some of the less well known parts of the earth. Maybe it's because Ms. Fritz grew up in China, but she has a sensitivity to non-western points of view, and is able to address these events from the point of view of the 'discoverees' as well as the 'discoverers'. More importantly, she is able to help the reader make those critical connections between events that helps bring make them understandable. I highly recommend this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Two thumbs down...
Review: I was so looking forward to digging into this book with my kids, so we could "explore" the age of exploration. We have enjoyed many of the books by Jean Fritz, especially those written about Colonial and Revolutionary America, but this one should not be included in that list. Ms. Fritz has an apparent personal dislike for certain groups of people and makes her dislike abundantly clear throughout the work. Unfortunately, this bigoted approach leaves such a bad taste in the reader's mouth that the entire story becomes unpalatable. The worst result of this approach is that Ms. Fritz has decided to rewrite history based on her own personal opinion instead of actual fact. This is a NON-FICTION book, so by inserting fiction into the equation, she has destroyed the trust that a reader should have in an author. All in all, I was sadly disappointed and will definitely question reading more of this author's work in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but...
Review: This book is humorous and includes, in my opinion, appropriate treatment of some negative aspects of the explorers (such as the slave trade). However, I have found subtle bias which may offend some Christians. The burning of the library at Alexandria is blamed on Christians, although this is not conclusively proven. Fritz writes "Christians did not believe in scholarship. They thought it was sacrilegious to be curious." This is a gross overstatement at best. In listing people and things sent with Columbus to the New World on a second trip, Fritz groups "six priests... in addition to fifty horses and a pack of dogs trained to attack hostile natives if necessary." Interesting that priests are listed with horses and attack dogs. Aside from these kinds of things, the book is interesting. I intend to "edit" when and if I read this to my children.
Rating: 
Summary: Clever and well-done!
Review: This book is Jean Fritz at her best. While the book is not something that you could sit down and just read for fun, it is an excellent example of 'fun-education' (is that an oxymoron?) that children of all ages will enjoy. There is something that everyone can learn from this entertaining book!
Rating:
Summary: A lively history of the Age of Exploration--warts and all.
Review: This is the first popular book I have seen on the Age of Exploration that lets the reader in on important details that have been evaluated honestly in scholarly works for decades, but which our more traditional popularizers have tended to gloss over in favor of the notion that the Europeans who led the continent's conquest of the world were all both unstoppable and righteous. (See John H. Perry's "Establishment of the European Hegemony, 1415-1715" (HarperCollins, 1961) for a good example of a more scholarly work that also includes all the warts in its accounts of the famous Age.) It's a lively, easy-to-read book, and it does a good job of telling both the heroic and the not-so-heroic aspects of the story. Well done.
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