We have been working on our IGCSE History topics for a year now and are planning on writing the exam this year. History is a bit different to other subjects because you can’t just buy one student book which covers all the topics, you actually select topics yourself and they buy a book which covers that topic. There are 2 papers and you need to select 2 different topics for each paper but you get quite a good selection of different topics to choose from. For Paper 1 there are 8 topics and you only need to select 2. Now if you think about that if they put all 8 of those into 1 book that would be a monster book so multiple smaller books do make sense.

For paper 1 we started off with choosing Dictatorship and Conflict in the USSR and then we also selected A World Divided Superpower relations. Now with both of those I first selected The Pearson published Student books (Pearson History Dictatorship and Conflict in the USSR and Pearson History A World Divided: Superpower Relations).

And I think these books are excellent (I have gone on and bought them for all of our History Topics that we have selected) but while we were working through the topic I did feel like it would be good to have a second source. I think that may stem from the fact that we have are new at doing IGCSE History and possibly I was just a bit nervous that I may miss something. And I think it also stems from the fact that I did not find as many online History resources as I did for our IGCSE Biology and our IGCSE Physics. Possibly also because my daughter is the kind of student you actually prefers using books for her learning than online. Okay it was probably all of these reasons combined but I did feel like two books for each topic would be better than just the one.

So for our Second book I got us the Hodder Book – Edexcel International GCSE History Paper 1 Depth Studies and this books covered both of the paper 1 topics that we had selected.

Now I am going to be really honest here. The Hodder book (this one above) is more summarized, (so because we are using them together we tend to read the Pearson published ones first, my daughter actually uses those ones to make notes for herself and then later on she comes and reads this one). But I also found that both books did contain little bits of information that the other one had excluded (so content wise they are not exactly the same). And the way the deal with answering questions and the tips they give you are different. I really liked this about them. The fact that we have 2 books means we get two sets of practice questions and two sets on sample answers which for us is a massive help. We really like both of them and think they work well together but if we had to be pushed and could only choose one book for each topic then I would go with the Pearson ones I mentioned first. And that is because I feel like they go into more detail and include more practice questions.

For us, combining the two books together for each topic really does work well and I feel like it helps to ensure we are covering our topics well.

So just for clarity purposes – this is the combination we are using for the paper 1 topic – Dictatorship and Conflict in the USSR

And this is the combination we are using for the Paper 1 topic – A World Divided: Superpower Relations

(Oh and on a separate note we have found doing these two topics works well together, having some knowledge on the Cold War helps with the USSR topic and having knowledge on the USSR helps with the Cold War topic).

Just to clarify for those interested these are the books that I mentioned in the post.

Pearson History Dictatorship and Conflict in the USSR

Pearson History A World Divided: Superpower Relations

Hodder Education – Edexcel International GCSE History Paper 1 Depth Studies

For more ideas on IGCSE books that we have been using are recommend look here – GCSE/IGCSE

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