The Story of Civilization – Volume 1 – Our Oriental Heritage
Author: Will Durant
Whew, this was a beast of a book coming in around 1,100 pages. I struggle with history books because they are often way too detailed for my level of interest. So I was excited when I heard about the Story of Civilization series because it is exactly what I have been looking for. I want to gain a high level understanding of the ebbs and flows and important inflection points of our history, but I don’t want to have to read every detail about every possible thing.
The Story of Civilization is an 11 volume series written over the span of 50 years, first by Will Durant, and then by Will and Ariel (his wife). The series was meant to carry on through to our modern era, but Will died around the age of 90 before it could be completed. Here is a list of all 11 volumes:
- Our oriental Heritage
- The Life of Greece
- Caesar and Christ
- The Age of Faith
- The Renaissance
- The Reformation
- The Age of Reason Begins
- The Age of Louis XIV
- The Age of Voltaire
- Rousseau and Revolution
- The Age of Napoleon
Our Oriental Heritage starts off by talking about the conditions and necessary ingredients for “civilization”. This includes physical and geographical conditions, as well as economic, and political factors. He also talks through other factors such as law, family, morals, religion, science, and art. He finishes off this section, which is only a prologue of the book, discussing the prehistoric beginnings of civilization.
I found the prologue very interesting. I’ve said this before, but Will Durant has a very eloquent way of writing that is both insightful and inspiring.
After that section, book one of Our Oriental Heritage begins. In book one we learn about the earliest known civilization, which is the Sumerians. For each of the civilizations discussed, Durant highlights topics like the historical background, economic life, government, religion and morality, letters, and arts.
After Sumeria, the book goes into a long section about Egypt. We learn about the gift of the Nile, the builders of Egypt, the civilization which includes the topics mentioned in the Sumerian civilization, plus more like science, architecture, manners, and philosophy.
He then talks similarly about Babylonia, Assyria, Judea, and Persia.
Book two is a comprehensive look at the history of India, and book three wraps up with a history of China and Japan.
I struggled to find this book in libraries or book stores, and only found nasty looking used copies on ebay or Amazon that I’d have to pay $250+ for and probably had mustard stains scattered throughout the book. So I listened the the audiobook version. At 1,100 pages, it of course had its boring parts, but overall I found it very interesting and illuminating. I plan to chip away at the other 10 volumes this year, but we will see how far I get.