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The Catholic Schools Textbook Project

The Catholic Schools Textbook Project is producing a 12-volume series of history/social studies textbooks and supporting materials specifically for Catholic schools and students. The project’s textbooks bring history to life – in the heart as well as the mind – and include the essential contribution of Catholics and the Faith to the story of development of civilization. The textbooks teach about the world while giving the Catholic Church the position she deserves in history, without exaggerating either favorable or unfavorable realities. Written in an engaging, journalistic style, they bring history to life with accuracy, vitality, and thought-provoking energy.

The Catholic School Textbook Project was begun by experienced Catholic teachers and educators who were convinced by years of experience of the vital need for serious new Catholic history and social studies books. In 1996, a concerned parent who shared this conviction contributed the first financial resources with a bequest of $17,000. By early 2000, the project had enough resources to engage a team of writers, history scholars, and advisors and start work on the first five volumes of the project.

The project is well into the painstaking work of writing, editing, and producing textbooks for our Catholic youth: textbooks that are superior to any now on the market. These books are superior, first of all in content, because they tell the story of civilization in light of the universal Truth that is Catholic Faith; they are superior in design and graphic appeal, using fine art and clear concise maps. They are what our children need, not only for their minds, but for their souls.

Currently, the project has published two of its five history textbooks and has a third ready for publication. All are produced using the highest quality in design, color, illustrations, and paper.

The first book, From Sea to Shining Sea: The Story of America, is aimed at grades 5-9 and teaches American history and geography. It tells the story of North America -- the Indian nations, European colonization, and the founding and history of the United States up to the Twentieth Century. Told as a series of historically accurate stories, the textbook includes thumbnail biographies, lives of the saints, maps, illustrations, and other supplemental material.

The second volume, All Ye Lands: World Cultures and Geography, is aimed at grades 6-9, and covers world history and culture from prehistory through the Greeks, the rise of Christianity, up through the Middle Ages, as well as developments in China, Japan, Russia, Europe, Africa and the Americas up to the mid 1800's.

The third volume, aimed at grades 7-9, is Light to the Nations: The Development of Christian Civilization (Part One.) This volume covers European history from the coming of Jesus Christ, through the achievements of medieval Christendom, to the beginning of the Enlightenment projects of the 18th century. The central concern of the volume is the effect on human civilization wrought by the Christian Faith.

For more information on the Catholic Schools Textbook Project and other volumes currently in production, please visit the project’s web site, http://www.catholictextbookproject.com/Index.htm.