This book is a chronological list of events, but it's the best list of chronological events a DM could ask for. It's fantastically useful for anyone wanting to run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms, and a great source of inspiration otherwise.

The historical recounting is interspersed with diegetic pieces that add flavour and perspective, as well as art pieces. The print quality of the POD is fine, thought the text of pieces in different fonts can be hard to read. The PDF has chaptering and is searchable.

I was so thrilled to see I even could get a print copy of this book at all, and thanks to DriveThru, it was. Quality was excellent, exactly what I wanted and needed so much.

I think at this point the immensity of accomplishment this book represents goes without saying. It's monumental. It's unfortunate that the online updates done by Brian James to bridge the gaps from 1385-1479 are not available anywhere, as an appendix or something, since Wizards tends to scrub the D&D website every time an edition changes.

I bought this in the POD, so I will speak to that: Get the PDF and POD. The POD is great to crack open at the table, read at your leisure, have on the shelf. Obviously, it's not as beautiful as the original hardcover. This is a soft cover produced from scans. The text looks a little blurry in spots, the art reproduces a bit dark. But it's all readable, nothing is too murky or unclear. And the original hardcover is gonna run you like $100-300 these days unless you get lucky. That said, get it with the PDF because being able to CTRL+F for a person's name or a place is invaluable.

It only goes up to 1385, so you're not gonna find an easy overview of the 4e and 5e Realms, but if you want the deep lore, this is the definitive book.

A very nice softback POD version of the Grand History of the Realms. The coloured sidebars on the internal pages make it very obvious that this is a POD version, but other than that, it's got a nice cover, it's well printed, with crisp and clear text. Some of the smaller internal panel artwork is a little dark, but nothing too terrible. The larger full page artworks are great.

Definitely recommended if you can't get hold of the original.

I'd had to sell this book a long time ago, so being able to get it in print again really feels like a treat. If you've ever wanted to do a deep dive, and I mean the deepest dive you more or less can do, into the history of Abeir-Toril and the history of the Forgotten Realms, this is absolutely a book you'll want to pick up at some point in the future.

This is probably the best book ever written about the Forgotten Realms. It has everything. Everybody should own a copy of it.

However, the PDF version is the worse PDF I have ever purchased. It is not searchable. Each page is an image scan and the scans are not even full page scans - there's white space margin around the outside of the scanned page. At least the PDF has bookmarks (TOC).

I bought both and I'm waiting for my POD to arrive. If the POD is as bad as the PDF - then I'll request a refund. If the POD is fine, then I'll update my review to 2 stars.

I know, I didn't even look at the PDF preview. I was too excited to order this, but I had moderate expectations that an official book would be of decent quality standards - especially THIS book.

The book is a 5 star book. This PDF is a 1 star. The POD will be rated once it arrives.

Buy this book on ebay or amazon, and avoid the PDF and POD until they put effort into doing a quality scan of this great book.

A cynic might dismiss this book as a novella-length version of the kind of historical timelines you might find on a fan-maintained Forgotten Realms wiki. That cynic is an idiot.

This book pulls together an astonishing amount of historical Realmslore and organizes it in a simple, chronological fashion. It's an essential resource for anyone wanting to enhance their game through a greater appreciation and understanding of the history of the Forgotten Realsm (both in Faerun and beyond).