A Child's History of the World

"... Here is a good subject for an argument or debate: Are we any happier with all these inventions than people were a thousand years ago without them?

Life is faster and more exciting; but it is more difficult and more dangerous. Instead of enjoying a book curled up in the corner of a sofa by a crackling fire, we leave a steam radiator and go out to the movies. Instead of singing or playing the violin, we turn on the graphophone or the player-piano and miss the chief joy in music, the joy of making it ourselves. Instead of the jogging drive in an old buggy behind a horse that goes along through the country-side almost by himself, we speed on in dangerous autos, to which we must pay constant, undivided attention or be wrecked..."

It mentions Confucius, featuring the line "Yet we know little of China’s history until a great deal later." Then the theft of silk, the Mongols, a brief mention with Columbus and Peter the Great, and ending with Commodore Perry's ending of Japan's millennia of isolation.

Pretty poor coverage before you factor in the "yellow race" parts. Those get pretty bad, like the discussion of the Teutons vs the Huns

>It was white toughs against yellow toughs, and the Huns were beaten. It was lucky they were beaten, for if they had won, these dreadful wild, yellow people might have conquered and ruled the world. The white toughs were bad enough, but the yellow would have been worse

I guess you can read this as a funny, outdated text but I personally would not give it to my kid.