All New Digital Book
Introducing Empires & Interconnections, the newest edition in the award-winning History Adventures digital book series, whose accolades include the 2019 Horizon Interactive Awards Gold Medal for Best Education App.
This fully interactive, animated digital learning product represents a fresh approach to history education, designed for today’s digital generation.
History Adventures: Empires & Interconnections (1450-1750) combines the latest in mobile entertainment with the power of narrative design—bringing the pages of history to life.
An Age of Exploration, Gunpowder, and International Trade
During this period of colossal change, from 1450-1750, the world got smaller. The age of exploration, gunpowder, and international trade took hold, like never before. Epic empires expanded, and followed trade routes–as European nations battled to control as much of the world’s wealth as possible. The dark side of this explosion of wealth and consolidated power and influence, meant enslavement and ruin for some, as Europeans unknowingly brought diseases that killed millions and meanwhile initiated the gruesome, inhumane Atlantic Slave Trade. Some nations remained autonomous and isolated, such as the Tokugawa of Japan–but this took huge effort to throw off this tide of increasing global interconnectedness.
Empires & Interconnections
For Empires & Interconnections, we have developed 6 new characters–each of whom confronts the core question: how to deal with this tidal sweep of rising empires, will they fold into this interconnectedness, or will they somehow resist?
A World of Characters
We begin our journey in 1453, as Ioannina, a woman of Byzantine and Turkish ancestry, experiences the Ottoman Siege of Constantinople, led by Sultan Mehmed II. The battle hangs by a thread, but ultimately the ancient capital falls, heralding the final death knell of the Roman Empire, and the rise of the Islamic empires of the Middle East, whose control of this critical crossroads will push the emerging mercantile empires of Western Europe to search for a Western route to Asia. Our next character, Luis Felipe Gutierrez, is a Spanish adventurer, who dreams of achieving wealth and glory in the New World–while spreading the word of God–as Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro had done before him. In the disease-stricken, war-torn mountains and jungles of Peru, he finds instead madness, confusion, and death.
In Tokugawa Japan, a young woman, Ishi, is a key advisor to the powerful warlord, Tokugawa, who strives to achieve the first Shogunate. She will advise Tokugawa on how to deal with these strange, fanatical European missionaries: should she grant clemency, or should she deal with them harshly, and with violence, to stamp out their looming threat. In 1619, we introduce William, a man forcibly brought to the new settlement of Jamestown in Virginia, by Portuguese Slave traders. Captured by English pirates in the Caribbean, William was sold along with 16 other Africans to the struggling Jamestown colony–and there he would be the first to confront an international slave trade that would last for centuries, and grip the lives of millions.
A century later we find one man, Jonas, was still struggling to find his place in the Atlantic World. As trading companies and governments tightened their grip, a few men like Jonas rebelled and turned pirate. Based in the notorious pirate haven of Nassau, in the Caribbean, Jonas plundered merchant ships. The question was for how long he could escape the hangman’s noose? On the other side of the world, in the Indian subcontinent, a Bengali tax collector must decide whether to remain loyal to the Mughal Emperor or side with the rapidly expanding British East India Company. As the company seized control of Bengal on the battlefield, Arun had to decide where his loyalties lay?
What Would I Have Done?
The Best Question About the Past You Can Ever Ask..
Innovative product features
- Immersive 360 Panorama Environments
- Animated, Interactive Infographics
- Enhanced Original Historical Documents
- Choose Your Own Adventure Experience
- Animated Illustrations & Dynamic Text
- AP World History Curriculum
- Media-Rich Interactive Assessments
Optimized for cross-platform performance, running flawlessly on phones, tablets, and the web.
What the Press are Saying
“Screenwriters have been adapting historical stories for years, but Spencer Striker, PhD is using a new medium to bring history to life—a fully animated, interactive, narrative-driven digital book series.”
– Script Magazine, May 7, 2020
“Spencer Striker’s History Adventures couldn’t have come at a better time. As parents all over the US are scrambling to home school their children, the digital media professor and producer has delivered us the history of the world, in an enticing and entertaining format.”
– Filmdaily, March 24, 2020
History Adventures showcases a fresh approach to learning and literacy, designed for today’s digital generation: interactive, multimodal content that combines mobile entertainment with the power of story—bringing the pages of history to life!
Download History Adventures: Empires & Interconnections today!
Links
http://www.historyadventures.co/
https://www.facebook.com/HistoryAdventures
https://www.instagram.com/history.adventures/
https://twitter.com/HistoryAdvs
Created by Spencer Striker, PhD
Digital Media Design Professor at Northwestern University in Qatar