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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Grand Story,
By
This review is from: The Age of Faith (Audio Cassette)
Will Durant wrote like a force of nature, and this book is a fine expression of his power. The body of his life's work seems to have been an effort, albeit incomplete, to cover the entire history of mankind, and each individual volume covers it's time frame by sweeping through every aspect of civilization: politics, military affairs, economics, science, art, philosophy, religion, literature, architecture, and social customs. The Age of Faith opens with the death of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 337 and carries up through around the 14th century, the dawn of what has come to be known as the Renaissance. As implied by the title of this volume, it was the flowering of the three great Western religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - which dominates the story, and Durant devotes significant attention to all three, even though the birth of "Christendom" ultimately emerges as the defining event of the era. The charm of Durant's writing is the passionate love affair he seems to have had with humankind through all times and in all of it's manifestations. While he doesn't minimize the unspeakable brutalities that recur, he writes with an exuberant reverence for the spiritual and intellectual industry that he finds in every facet of human development. Like any competent historian, he also dispels historical stereotypes, and there is no real sense of a "Dark Age" at any point during this period despite Durant's occasional use of the term. However, what does become clear is that until late in the period, it was Islam, rather than Christianity, that achieved the most advanced civilization of medieval times. For readers, such as myself, who are largely ignorant of Islam, the lengthy chapters devoted to Muslim culture may be the most informative and interesting in the book. The Jews, who were scattered and lacked political or military power, are portrayed as bringing a degree of cohesion to European and Eur-Asian development, maintaining a cultural identity of their own, while making remarkable contributions, intellectually and economically, to the dominant cultures within which they found themselves. Inevitably the structure of a book like this is a bit chaotic. There's little chronology to it, and the author jumps from one geographic region and one topic to another in no particular pattern. The book closes with an entire chapter devoted to Dante, in whose writing and life Durant sees both the quintessence of the mediaeval spirit a bridge to the Renaissance. The book's limitations are probably inherent in the author's very purpose, since by covering everything, he's forced by the constraints of space to gloss over much. Even so, The Age of Faith extends over a thousand pages. For readers, again such as myself, who are primarily interested in the political history of the period, the lavish attention paid to cultural topics - e.g., page-long excerpts from obscure Islamic poems, or breathless and detailed descriptions of a particular Byzantine mosaic or a gargoyle on the wall of a French cathedral - are distracting and at times annoying in light of the cursory focus given to weightier matters. Allowing for all this, however, this is a fine book from an extraordinarily gifted writer, and I highly recommend it.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You are reading the best!,
By
This review is from: The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization, Volume 4) (Hardcover)
I'm not kidding, it took me almost a year read this book. It is at once, both intriguing and, how can I put this gently, boring. Before you zap me with a negative rating, let me explain. What Durant is attempting to do in writing the story of civilization is incredible. I just do not know of anyone who has come close to accomplishing what Durant (and his wife, Ariel) have done. But when one attempts to cover just a vast subject, it is difficult to communicate with clarity the sub-total of human achievement. For instance, his discussion of the rise of Islam was both interesting and difficult to read. Intriguing because we see that the conflict between Islam and the Christian west has antecedents that go back over a thousand years. I discovered that it was nip and tuck whether or not the West was going to be able to defend Europe from Moslem conquest. The current tension between radical Islam and the West is only the latest chapter in a long and bloody struggle; but our inability to grasp Arabic names, geography and history, makes this reading difficult. Another area of difficulty was his discussion on medieval architecture. Just how does one communicate form in words that does the form justice? Durant gets and A for effort, but, once again, I had to plow my way through sections like these. Is it worth the read? You bet. What we see here is the drama of human achievement. From the death and destruction that followed the fall of the Imperial Rome to the civilizing of a continent, Durant shows us the triumph of the human spirit. Durant also shows us the legacy of Roman law, language and civilization on the West. Rather than being a sharp demarcation between ancient Rome and the middle ages, we see the survival of Roman culture, law and institutions as they were morphed by medieval culture. Oh, by the way, the prose is magnificant. I found myself underlying sentence after sentence and reading them to my wife,friends or anybody else who would listen. So after almost a year and 1100 pages, I finally completed the book. Lets see, volume five is next, The Renaissance. Another 700 pages. Um. I think I'll take a break and read some light fiction first.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing...,
This review is from: The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization, Volume 4) (Hardcover)
Although it is obvoius that to squeeze 7 centuries of history of Europe and Asia Minor into 1 volume (although very thick) is a task for an ingenious historian, to make this volume engrossing and even fascinating - is hardly achievable. But Mr. Durant's talent is unsurpassed: the book contains summary of all important events - military and religeous, cultural and social - as well as biographies of legendary personae of the times we used to call the Dark Ages. But the language of the book and the details it provides are not just dry facts (which makes many other similar compilations boring and easily forgettable), the author makes you feel and understand the customs and rites of the epoch, its way of dressing, food, family relations..., by drawing parallels with our times. I have read quite a few books on history of that period, and by far, this book, employing a special scientific approach, is the best, although written several decades ago: it throbbs with the echo of life of centuries long past.
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