Meandering work with a difficult narration

To fully appreciate Durant's encyclopedic work on the story of our our world, several things need to be understood.

Firstly, his approach to history is synthetic, as opposed to analytic - he doesn't look at one aspect or one period of human history, but rather he sets out to describe the entire experience of mankind from the Neolithic age to Napoleonic over the course of 11 volumes totalling around 9800 pages. That is a huge endeavour, especially considering that he wasn't writing a reference text, but a book that you could in theory pick up and read from cover to cover. Durant appreciated the challenge of his task and in the foreword to this, the first volume, he apologies in advance for the invariable omissions or mistakes.

Secondly, if you decide to read the entire series, you will, by virtue of what this work attempts to do, encounter whole cultures and/or time periods of which you knew little, if anything at all, and it can feel very discouraging and bewildering to listen to 6 hours on the ancient Chinese empire if your knowledge of China begins with Mao.

Thirdly, this volume was written in 1935 (it took Durant his whole life to finish the series together with his wife, and he died before he could write the volume on the 20th century), so both our knowledge of the ancient world and of our immediate history has obviously moved on since. It is particularly obvious in the section on Japan where Durant discusses her imperialistic ambitions as a possible catalyst for war with the USA.

Having said all that, the work is a great text as a standalone book, and indispensable if you want to read the entire series. Durant gives a great overview of cultures and intertwining politics of the period that few people study in school nowadays - ancient Assyria, Babylon, Sumer and the Persian empire, for example. It is hard to appreciate the greatness of Greek victory at Marathon (discussed in Vol II of the series), without first reading in this book about what a formidable enemy the Persians were. The Carthaginian civilisation (discussed in Vol III) makes more sense if you know about the ancient Phoenicians that were their ancestors.

My view of history has always been eurocentric and I knew next to nothing about India, China and Japan before reading this book. I am still more inclined to read about Rome and Renaissance Europe, but I have already added some books on China to my wishlist, as due to Durant's overview, I am more comfortable with where China fits in with the rest of the world and the history I have studied so far.

As this is the first volume in his work, there are teething problems. His thoughts tend to meander sometimes and there are parts that I feel were given undue attention - there is an extensive section on various Hindu holy texts that would have been more appropriate for a specialised book, as opposed to the general history of mankind. Having said that, I appreciated his overview of Akhenaten's religious reforms in Egypt (1350s BC), as I didn't realise that someone made such a strong attempt at monotheism before the Jews.

If you persevere with the series, Durant's writing gets much more streamlined and succinct - I'm on Vol III at the moment, and it's wonderful!

The biggest issue with the book is the narration. If you look at all 11 volumes of the series on Audible, you will see that after this book, everything is narrated either by Stefan Rudnicki or Grover Gardner; there is a reason for that. Robin Field's narration is soporific and monotonous and that is especially apparent (painfully so) when Field gets to the more obscure parts of the texts. Maybe my issues with the section on Hinduism had less to do with the text itself and more to do with the fact that it sounded like Field was reading an eulogy for an insurance agent.

In spite of that, if you decided to read this as a standalone book, I say - persevere! I don't know of any other book that could take you from 10 000 BC to Ancient Greece in a more succinct or logical way.

If you want to read the whole series, I promise that it gets much better - the writing is more edited and structured and one of the narrators - Gardner - is also the guy whom Audible reviewers consider the quintessential Mark Twain narrator, so he is perfect for Durant's witty asides of which there are plenty.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

30 people found this helpful

Don't judge the entire series by this volume

Any additional comments?

I have just completed all twelve volumes of Will Durant's “The Story of Civilization”. I listened to them in reverse order, starting with volume 12 and ending with this volume, Volume 1. A fantastic series overall, taking me nearly a year to consume in their entirety.

The readers:

The reading of Volumes 2->12 is divided between two readers, both of whom are excellent. Volume 1 is by neither of the two, and the voice doesn't work quite as well as in subsequent versions. Not awful, but does contribute a little to the lower overall mark for this volume

The content:

Will Durant's, IMHO, learnt much from the writing of the first volume. The writing tone in all subsequent volumes is more measured, less apologetic and less equivocal. Volume 1 erred too much on that side. Again, this has Volume 1 marked does against other volumes.

Perhaps the first volume is also coloured by being the only one that deals with “contemporary” (in this case the early 1930s) events. Volume reflects the “of its time” writing both by having to deal events such as Japanese expansionism in measured tones, by some the social comment, and by terms used (racial, social, cultural) that had already gone of the usage by the time subsequent volumes.

Make no mistake: this is a very good book. It suffers only in comparison to its successors in the sequence.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

Probably the most intelligent book I've ever read

Will Durant has put together probably one of the most intelligent pieces of literature that I've ever come across. In this volume he goes over the oriental history in detail. Of course as he says no one person can review the history of 4,000 years completely but it's pretty close to you finding it from one source of reference. He looks at ancient Egypt and some other parts of Africa (mainly Egypt), to ancient Persia, India to China and Japan and many other places in between. Will Durant looks at many aspects of all these societies, from religion, everyday customs, economics, law, crime and punishment, agriculture, architecture, business, philosophy, literature, war, social life, the list goes on. He looks at famous historical figures in these regions from Ramesses the second to the Persian King Xerxes and his father Darius. Did you know that the Chinese language has over 40,000 characters which represent ideas (or stories) so it takes the average Chinese person about 50 years to learn all these characters which makes sense. How long would it take us to learn 40,000 ideas in detail? Probably around 50 years if that. This book will blow your mind, give you some perspective and help you understand some of the elements of our society and why things are the way they are. It will give you a level of appreciation for the modern times we live in today and increase your knowledge of different cultures. And this is only volume 1 of 11. A must buy.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

Brilliant, objective, informative.

I loved the structure and methodical approach to each topic in this volume I of the Story of Civilization. Very clear and easy to follow language whilst not shying away from the detail. ... P.S. interesting to listen to the political, economical and cultural analysis of the Far East of the 30s in the 20th century - very to the point and visionary at times whilst the author would have veen oblivious in 1935 to the termoil that followed in 1937 to 1945 and beyond in that region of the world...

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Was a fantastic panorama of where from are current civilisation issues and the debt of gratitude it should bestow upon it .

Was a fantastic panorama of where from are current civilisation issues and the debt of gratitude it should bestow upon it .

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Annoying narrator

Whatever the content the narrator is not pleasing enough to allow any more that a few minutes of the story.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

Hopelessly out of date

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I was bitterly disappointed, on starting to listen to this, to discover that it was published in 1935. The advances in the world of scholarship in this field since then have made this book irrelevant. Had the blurb made clear just how old this book is I would never have bought it

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

Needs updating

This is a good overview introduction to this important aspect of being generally well educated but was written in 1935.

He is clearly anticipating major trouble with Japan and the rise of china bit of course the twentieth century went totally insane in ways which perhaps no one could have predicted. The Holocaust hadn't happened -, although the Armenian genocide at the hands of the muslim Turks had and isn't really mentioned - the Jews hadn't returned to their homeland and refounded the state of Israel etc

So to cut a long story it was revolutionary in its day to cover such a massive sweep but today its sorely in need of a new edition. If that happens the potential to link the discussions of various art architecture and personalities with weblinks would make the resource amazingly good.

As far as I know no modern historian has attempted so epic an undertaking and it would be great if some did.

But if any publisher is listening not a Marxist revisionist piece of propaganda please. And don't do the stupid pc whitewash of left wing non European atrocities. And be as critical of Islam and non western civilisations as you inevitably are of the West. That's just the racism of lower expectations writ massive.

Thanks

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful