How to get young people interested in history is indeed important and interesting. I have two sons which we often talk about things about society and history.

When talking to them I am reminded of what I found interesting at a young age. I think young people tend to love extreme things. Like they love the richest guys, the biggest tyrant etc.

Both loved stories about the richest guy in history Mansa Musa from Mail and how he went around with lots of gold and gave away so much he crashed the whole Egyptian economy.

My oldest son has been watching stuff about dictators like Gadaffi, Idi Amin, Kim, Saddam. I know as a parent I cringe a bit about my sons being interested in these horrible people but I know that I was pretty much the same at that age.

My youngest is interested in the world wars. I have tried to piggy back other historical info on the interestes they have.

I also got them interested in various historical civilizations through the Civilization games. Those games really triggered my interest in history when I was in middle school.

Also Donald Duck has been useful to me because they often go on adventures in different countries/civilizations to find various treasture: Inca, Aztech, Mongols etc.

I guess one can piggy pack on popular historical periods and people like Samurai s in medieval Japan, Knights in Europe, Pirates of the Carribean, Cowboys of the Wild West, treasure seeking conquistadors. From each of these themes one can try to build out interest in other areas.

Like with Samurais you could start with swords and armor and least to get boys interested. But then you could expand with castles and begin talking about the civil war itself and how trade with the Dutch and Portugese influenced the outcome. The import of gunpowder weapons.

You can always start with some really tangible core like weapons, amor, clothes etc and start building out from that.

I guess it doesn't necessarily show the bigger trends as you wanted, but I think it is good for young people to have a sort of visual sense of what each historical period is like.

I remember that helped me a lot as a kid. When I learned history I could place things mentally because I could sort of visualy imagine the world.

I tried a bit to do the same with my kids, by asking them stuff like "Did they have cars when Napolean lived? So how did they get around?"

We would do little quizes with pictures of clothes, buildings, weapons, transportation or whatever and I would ask what time period they thought it was.

I think a lot of kids would find that interesting. It isn't too complicated.