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Our Oriental Heritage (Story of Civilization) Hardcover – January 1, 1997
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- Print length1047 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFine Communications
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1997
- Dimensions7.25 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-101567310125
- ISBN-13978-9960717319
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Product details
- Publisher : Fine Communications (January 1, 1997)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 1047 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1567310125
- ISBN-13 : 978-9960717319
- Item Weight : 3.7 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.25 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #343,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
William James Durant was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1885. He was educated in the Roman Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peter’s (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey where he graduated in 1907, and Columbia University, New York. For a summer in 1907 he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry (1907-11). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons which he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York and became (1911-13) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders. Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupils, resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Woodbridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. Beginning in 1913 at a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy which, continuing twice weekly for over thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works. The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927, and is credited as the work that launched Simon & Schuster as a major publishing force and that introduced more people to the subject of philosophy than any other book. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays and Will’s lecture tours, Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume II, The Life of Greece (1939) and Volume III, Caesar and Ch
Volume III, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume IV, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume V, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume VI, The Reformation (1957). Mrs. Durant’s share in the preparation of these volumes became more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume VII, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it has been on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), Rousseau and Revolution (1967), for which the Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1968), and The Age of Napoleon (1975). The publication of The Age of Napoleon concluded five decades of achievement and for it they were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977). Throughout his life, Will Durant was passionate in his quest to bring philosophy out of the ivory towers of academia and into the lives of laypeople. A champion of human rights issues, such as the brotherhood of man and social reform, long before such issues were popular, Durant’s writing still educates and entertains readers around the world, inspiring millions of people to lead lives of greater perspective, understanding, and forgiveness.
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I want to understand the world around me, how it works, where it is going. The past is all we have to study in this regard. It tells us what people did, thus what they are likely to do again, instead of the delusional ideas they have about themselves.
“Wise men say, not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions; and thus they must necessarily have the same results. … I believe that the world has always been the same, and has always contained as much good and evil, although variously distributed among the nations according to the times.” —Niccolo Machiavelli
Will Durant has a lot to teach me, and I like his tone and approach. He wants to see the big patterns in human behavior and derive whatever lessons may be found there. In this book he shares his definition of a civilization and traces our earliest knowledge of people living in large, organized societies. I felt as though I were reading letters from my distant ancestors.
If you want the latest scholarship or a political deconstruction, Durant won’t appeal to you. For me, these distinctions are only relevant if you are already knowledgeable about the history, and if you are, there is no need to read Durant. I do not know the history, and the general topics Durant covers are not likely to be wiped out by new discoveries. I knew little about the Peloponnesian Wars, for example, so now I know more. Nobody from Harvard is going to shock the world next week with proof the wars never happened. More important to me is to walk through this long story with a companion I like. I like Will Durant. I like his voice from the early 20th century, and he is the perfect companion for me.
He writes, “The world has almost forgotten [Polybius]; but historians will long continue to study him because he was one of the greatest theorists and practitioners of historiography; because he dared to take a wide view and write a “universal history”; and because, above all, he understood that mere facts are worthless except through their interpretation, and that the past has no value except as our roots and our illumination.” [Vol. 2]
The big questions for me were:
1. Would I commit to completing the entire “Story of Civilization?” (yes)
2. How could I fit it into my busy life? (see below) and
3. Would it be worth the time?” (yes again)
How I read the whole set
I set a daily goal to reach the end within one year. When I took away the extensive notes, bibliographies and indexes, the eleven volumes in my set totaled 9,300 print pages. It looks like the number of "pages" in Kindle is different, but since the amount of content on screen is adjustable, that number is ambiguous. Back to ink on paper: If I gave myself a full year, about 26 pages per day would do it. I didn’t like waiting that long to finish, so I set my daily rate at 40, finishing in 233 days, about 8 months. Durant writes meaty pages, so I had to prioritize my 40 above other activities to get through them. After a few weeks, however, 40 pages per day was just normal life.
We can take inspiration from a character in the story, Caius Plinius Secundus, known as “Pliny the Elder.” He had to work all his life for the Roman navy, but managed to write a small library of nonfiction books. His nephew described him arising before 2 a.m. and stealing every spare minute for his studies. “He once reproved me for walking; ‘you need not have lost those hours,’ he said, for he counted all time lost that was not given to study.”
I bought each volume on Kindle and also checked out the paper copy from my local library. The Kindle allowed me to listen to my computer read pages (by invoking the text-to-speech feature) while I cooked breakfast or worked in the yard. Every extra minute spent reading speeds completion. The other value in the Kindle is the highlights and notes feature. Once you mark or note passages, you can go to a website and copy them all at once. You can also export the notebook directly from Kindle, but this document has formatting difficulties, in my experience. The combination of paper and Kindle helped break up the work.
If you embark on this journey, I salute you. For me it was well worth the price in money, time and concentration. If you want to know what I took away from this study, see my review of “The Age of Napoleon.”
I have one problem that I cannot address anywhere else, and I'm hoping someone who reads this may have a suggestion for me. I have both the text and Audible versions of OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE, but I am unable to download the Audible version to my iPhone (as I have been able to do with other Kindle books) -- therefore, I am unable to listen to the Audible version on my iPhone the way I can on Kindle. As I said, with other books where I own both print and Audible, I have been able to switch from reading to listening at will, but not with this one. Any suggestions for remedying would be greatly appreciated.
Meanwhile, despite that inconvenience, I recommend this volume -- and by extension every subsequent one in the series -- without reservation. This is truly one of the towering achievements of historical writing. Not only that, it's FUN!
As others have noted, the writing style is dated. Originally published in 1935, some of the terms Durant uses are cringe-worthy and much of the language is archaic. As much a book about history, this book/series is history itself.
The Durants are attempting the impossible: The Story of Civilization. I'm not a historian so I can't speak to the academic quality of Durant's writing; I don't know what he left-out or glossed-over. In the 100 years-or-so since he began researching and writing this book many of our interpretations and pool of knowledge has changed. But the attempt is gorgeous; the prose is beautiful. It's an enjoyable book to read and should be part of everyone's library.
The use of this book will further my own education on what took place on this planet at that time and can't wait to oder and read the next volume.
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Excellent book.