History has earned the partly-deserved notoriety of being a dreary subject with an overload of factual detail and dates. So there is clearly a great need to make the subject interesting and engaging for young people. The lives of individuals are a good way of humanizing the past and making it less drab and abstract. Life stories well told can engender interest, reflection, empathy and wonder. Both these books take on this important task with verve and enthusiasm, though in various ways.
People Who Made History: Stories from Ancient India is a slim book consisting of twelve chapters, written variously by Nilima Sinha, Nilima Jha, Nita Berry and Neera Jain. The subjects are well-known figures—Gargi, Siddhartha, Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka, Charaka, Gautamiputra Satakarni, Samudragupta, Fa-Hien, Kalidasa, Aryabhata, and Pulakesin II. Most of them were politically powerful men, but there are also a woman, poet, mathematician-astronomer, scholar, and Chinese monk. Recognizing the importance of visuals for young readers, the text is interspersed with drawings (the name of the illustrator is unfortunately not mentioned). A few endnotes explain Sanskrit terms or unfamiliar words. The stories are interspersed with snippets of information on miscellaneous issues such as the rise of Jainism, Pattachitra, Nalanda and Natya-shastra. There are no dates in this book, obviously a conscious decision.