Don't Know Much About History

I just finished the book "Birds without Wings" by Louis De Bernieres. It was a wonderful historical novel set during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of Turkey. My knowledge of the Ottoman Empire prior to reading this book was pretty close to none. I had no idea that it officially lasted until 1923. I wish I had known a lot more about it because the whole the assasanation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand being the thing that set off WWI, would've made a LOT more sense.

The Ottoman Empire

The older I get and the more world history I learn about, the more I realize how little is taught in history courses in the U.S. I recall going over the United States' involvement in both world wars in several different years (although I don't recall that we got into a lot more detail in the higher grades than we did in the lower grades). The other parts of both wars were pretty much ignored. I'm from Texas, so I remember a lot of my Texas history. I recall studying Mesopotamia, Egypt (FYI, Cleopatra was a Pharoah people, not a queen), and the Roman Empire, but not the history of China, Japan, the Sassanid Empire, Ottoman Empire, Byzantine Empire, or any part of Africa other than Egypt. Basically, the history of the majority of the people on this earth was never even mentioned in passing.




There's no real point to this post, other than that I find it appalling that there was so much left out of my education.