Revolutions of the World in Simple Spanish: Learn Spanish the Fun Way with Topics that Matter (Topics that Matter: Spanish Edition)

Understanding the importance of comprehensible input to learning Spanish, I’m always looking for content that relates to my interests but is accessible for a lower intermediate level learner. It can be quite difficult to find enough material that is about substantial topics that is not aimed at native speakers but produced for learners in the quantities needed to progress with language-learning. I had invested in Olly’s story learning beginners series which was educationally useful, but the actual story was a little dull. This series is a big step forward in making content that is interesting and substantial.This book met my expectations as a great learning tool, but really surpassed my expectations for the quality of the content on revolutions. A person will not only improve their Spanish by reading this book, but also gain a sense of how revolutions have shaped modern society from the bourgeois revolutions, the first workers revolution, struggles against slavery and revolutions in the developing world. It was smart of Olly to include the 1848 revolution, as it is often overlooked, but is the link between the revolutions to establish capitalism to the modern revolutions against capitalist ruling classes in the twentieth century.I was pleased to see that Olly did not fall into tropes that right wing historians use to discredit where ordinary people have risen up to make change. A few times the content poses the question of why did the revolutions lead to another bureaucratic or authoritarian regime. It is beyond the scope of this work to give an answer to that, but people who are inspired by the content of Olly’s book or other material on revolution should investigate the role of Stalinism in the workers movement during the 20th century.In summary, this is a great resource for Spanish learners and a surprisingly good introduction about revolutions, which could not be more relevant today. I will certainly buy some of Olly’s other works in this series based on the strength of this book.

Really really good content and book quality (even better than short stories in Spanish!). Very well written. I’m doing Alevel History and Spanish, so this book is super useful for both of my subjects. The vocab is challenging but the content overall isn’t that hard to understand.