Customer Reviews

The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dr. Will Durant and his wife Ariel have created the twentieth century's classic masterwork of history for the general reader.

The Story of Civilization is brought to life in eleven volumes: (1) Our Oriental Heritage; (2) The Life of Greece; (3) Caesar and Christ; (4) The Age of Faith; (5) The Renaissance; (6) The Reformation; (7) The Age of Reason Begins; (8) The Age of Louis XIV; (9) The Age of Voltaire; (10) Rousseau & Revolution; and (11) The Age of Napoleon.

It will take some time to read through this incredible recount of history, but it is worth it. I was fortunate to purchase the entire set at a chain national bookseller who was discounting the books by over 50%. When I opened the box I was surprised to find an additional bonus book or "twelfth" volume entitled "The Lessons of History."

For the student of history, instead of paying a fortune collecting piecemeal books that cover various historical events and eras, buy this set instead. It is the equivalent of one-stop shopping. This set is a fantastic collection and if you are looking to find an all encompassing treatise of world history, this where to start. You will not be disappointed.
Unprecedented and unparalleled! I rate it at five stars.

The Story of Civilization is an excellent history and the most complete result of the ambitious goal of writing a world history. The books are organized in such a way that they can be read as individual works or be read out of sequence with no loss to their meaning. Overall I rate them very highly and would suggest them to the interested non historian and implore the budding historian to read them since it is doubtless they will enjoy them.

Will Durant began his intellectually adventurous life attempting to be a philosopher. He was good at it but he, Like myself, saw the intertwining of history and philosophy. I believe he saw that seeing the greatness of man's record (history) was more valuable and enriching than speculating on what man might be (philosophy). His books exude his philosophical inclinations and are far more enjoyable for optimistic view of man evolving towards greatness through the ages.

Durant paints each historical character has a real human being with the complexities of character we all have. While he doesn't make excuses villains of history he makes sure he humanizes each person mentioned. This is the main constant of the Story of Civilization: Durant sees civilization as a network of real people interacting. His work presents all of recorded history not as chronology and not as a sequence of events but as a progression of people.

The style of the books is conversational and peppered with puns and overall enjoyable to read. He is amazingly concise while still making his points. That being said, he does require that the reader do some work and remember people and events. However, I surmise that it wont require heavy note taking or anything because these books are a fun read.

His style is a good mix of history as literature and history as a science. The mix is necessary for the sake of readability and those of you who have been reading modern histories that seem rely too much on footnotes and data points or provide little at all will find his style refreshing. The historians among you will be pleased the number of footnotes and the well documented bibliography , but I need to say that if you are attempting to use these books for university-level research, use them purely for their bibliography and pull out a few of his well-worded quotes for emphasis.

Overall you should take a chance with this set. Buy a used copy simplybecause it makes an impressive statement on a bookshelf. Even if you don't undertake the task you will have a beautiful set of books and your friends will be impressed by your intellectual prowess. If you do decide to read them, you have made an even wiser decision. While it required 5 years for me to complete the set, I am very happy I have and still to this day go back to them. Buy them read them and enjoy them... you will vastly enrich your life with this set of books.

-- Ted Murena

History understood is history put to good use. Will Durant and his beloved wife report the course of humankind through the medium of it's greatest philosophers. In so doing they become two of the greatest themselves. Though derided as a populist by the intelligensia of the twenties when he first penned the Story of Philosophy, Will Durant's rhythmic prose; his sparkling wit and his gentle nature has been a constant source of pleasure and comfort since I was first presented with a copy of the SOP some 15 years ago. Since then I have been gradually collecting the volumes of the Story of Civilisation, the joint masterpiece of Will and Ariel . My collection is not yet complete, but I will not allow myself to die until it is. This body of work should be on the bookshelf of everyone whose pleasure is derived from the contemplation of our place in the universe; whose aspirations and inspirations spring from a belief of the ingenuity of the human mind and from the pusuit of contentment and happiness. The books not only celebrate the breadth and joy of human progress, but also delineate and analyse human cruelty and frailty with a whimsical and generous wit that enriches the soul of any reader who is fortunate enough to drink from this well of wisdom.

I have owned this set for close to thirty years, as well as the Great Books, and while I confess to very rarely digging in to them, I could not be without the combined volumes in my personal library.

This set has The Lessons of History available alone, and I strongly recommend that thin but brilliant volume for those who would partake of the hard-earned wisdom of Will and Ariel Durant without necessarily buying the full collection.

See also:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

Reading the entirety of this prodigious and magnificent eleven-volume history is one of the greatest pleasures I have ever known, and one of the biggest favors I have ever done for myself. I can't recommend it highly enough. Get to work now, you will love every time you sit down with this history. I counted 9,955 pages of actual text, and every page without exception is a supreme pleasure to read. For me, time on the clock spent reading was about four years. Time on the calendar was about ten years; I took some time off a couple of times. I was reading for pleasure, of which there is huge portions, and took notes and made cross references in my library, so if you are just there to read, and go faster than I did, you could take less than my four years of actual reading. I'm not talking about any "retirement project;" I was working full time and keeping up with my compositional effort all the while.

Durant's idea was to write what he called "Integral History," which is basically the history of everything important there is to know about any given era. He explains it early on in the first volume. He wanted to do this for the whole planet's history, and at that level, his view of the world was so clear, and his perspective was accurate enough, to predict more plainly than anyone else of his time that Japan would go to war with America. For that prediction alone, made in book form and available to anyone who would read him, Will Durant belongs among the great historians. Why didn't Washington say, Durant thinks the Japanese will fight us, we'd better staff the lookout better? Karl Popper tells us that the strength of a scientific theory is measured by its predictive power. Therefore, what may be called Will Durant's "Scientific History" showed the most predictive power of any other historian's work: I would like to hear from anybody who can find an equally clear prediction coming from any other historian at any time. Samuel P. Huntington comes to mind, but his book is an effort to prove what would be, on a very particular point; since he was right, he certainly counts as a scientist of history. But he was not making his prediction along the way of a general history.

Modern serious historians ignore Durant and his method at their peril. Will and Ariel Durant deserve their popularity. His sheer wisdom and humanity put his thought right up there with Shakespeare, I mean it.

After publishing the first volume of the proposed history of the world, entitled Our Oriental Heritage, in which he makes the prediction that could have saved millions of lives and vast amounts of suffering, if only it had been taken seriously, Durant realized that he would have to specialize in geographical areas of the world, and he never was able to return to the entire-world effort. After several more volumes he realized that he could really only write a history of Europe. But at every opportunity he included as much non-European material as he could; for example, early Muslim civilization is quite competently, judiciously, even lovingly handled, and when as in the case of this civilization, it measures up better than its contemporary European peer, Durant not only doesn't shy from making this clear, he lets you revel in the reality of it. Now I never let some American ignoramus talk rubbish about early Muslim civilization, about which he knows not a jot. Also, Durant makes the point that Muslim polygamy is often serial - why, isn't that what we actually have?

Durant's project was bigger than he could complete; he never made it to the Twentieth Century, and the political history, which is of course the core of his historical method, only makes it as far as the end of Napoleon's career, to 1815 (though attendant personalities and movements reach completion; there is plenty of time to get in full biographies of Goethe and Beethoven, for example). But that is enough to understand the beginning of the destruction, for better or worse, of monarchism, and that is probably the key fact you need to start a progress up to the present. But you will have to read a lot of different kinds of books to get the perspective Durant would have given us; few people have even tried to present this kind of "integral history." He is probably ignored by modern historians for what they would claim is his very hubris at making the attempt he made, and when he writes about something you know a lot about, such as, for me, when he writes about music history, I am disappointed with some things he says. For example, he calls J.S. Bach "The greatest composer of all time," a more professionally acceptable term would be that he was the "Most Influential" composer of all time. So sometimes Durant's enthusiasm gets the better of him. But you can forgive this if you realize he is here to help you love the world and the far vaster project of uniting it. Overall the vastness of his project is met astonishingly well, and always there is Durant's rueful, world weary but compassionate wisdom.

Here are some of the more choice generalizations, offered in context with dispassionate detail (in my words): America forever duplicates the class war of Seventeenth Century England: the North is the common people, the South is the nobility. Here's another: the English Civil War was a rehearsal for the French Revolution - there was even a "Committee for Public Safety" both times. Durant makes clearer than the American public school system ever does the important position of France in world and European history; an ancient bridge to the Muslim world; with for centuries the most formidable military. But the grandest generalization of all, offered only after all was clear, including that it was time for the nonagenarian and his wife to calmly accept they would complete no more large studies, that eleven would have to do, and offer the wisdom that crowns all: you cannot create a political system that guarantees both freedom and equality. You can plausibly attempt to guarantee one or the other, but not both. So, I conclude, the American Dream will never be realized. A sliding scale between the two is the closest you can ever come. Thank you, Will and Ariel Durant.

Now, here is a wonderful serendipity of reading this Story of Civilization: book shopping will be easier for you from then on. I continually strike authors off my shopping list, now that I know some things better. I personally learned that I detest the Puritans that we are taught in grade school to think so highly of. Now I think the British absolutely did the right thing to boot them out of England, and I will never support another American effort that stinks of their narrow-mindedness and ignorance. The damage they do everywhere they go, right up through the George W. Bush era, makes me wonder whether I should accept even one of them, John Milton, into my catalog of writers. Never again will I hesitate over whether to read Pascal - he's out, T.S. Eliot's involvement is not recommendation enough. Durant didn't have this generalization in mind for me to make - he is much more detached than that. But after reading over and over again about the awful effects of people like the Puritans, I say, they're out for good.

Draw your own conclusions, but don't hesitate to read the whole of this wonderful, beautiful, and unmatched Story of Civilization. You will thank yourself.

This work may be somewhat daunting to the modern, time-pressed reader, but believe it or not it actually qualifies as light reading. Having said that, I wouldn't start with Volume 1, because it isn't the best of the series. The title of the entire work (The Story of Civilization) is a misnomer. It would have been better for Durant to skip the first volume and call the rest A Survey of European History, which is what it really a amounts to, and as such would have been right on target and still a fantastic piece of literature (for literature it certainly is, being both elegant of prose and enjoyable in style).

The problem with Volume 1 is that its scope is too ambitious and its extension too brief to do justice to Oriental history. Of course, he only claims to cover those aspects of Eastern culture that impinge upon European history. Still, it comes across as shallow and out of date.

His Life of Greece (Volume 2) is just the right size for its purpose, and is truly magnificent. It is highly quotable, even though ancient European history is covered in greater depth and with greater accuracy in more modern works such as the Cambridge Ancient History (the new edition). Ancient Greece is lovingly portrayed, and readers will develop an appetite for the newer (usually a bit dry) treatises on the subject.

Volume 3 (Caesar and Christ) is again perhaps too ambitious in scope (there's tons of material on Rome, and Durant covers the early pre-empire period too quickly, in my view). The same can be said for Volume 4: it is the thickest tome in the series, but trying to fit the entire Middle Ages between the covers of a single book is impossible (compare with the 8-tome New Cambridge Medieval History, which is really the standard reference for the period). Still, for the hurried reader with only a week to spend on the beach, you could hardly do better than taking The Age of Faith along with you.

Volumes 5 through 11 are where Durant really shines. Sources were evidently more plentiful and easier to find for Durant than for earlier ages, so readers can lower their guard a bit when judging the author's statements (i.e. the story becomes more factual and trustworthy). This is the point at which his wife Ariel becomes involved in the writing, which becomes less intimate at times (as is inevitable with any collaborative exercise), but perhaps is also the reason why each volume covers less ground and are therefore better as sources in their own right, sparing the casual reader from having to wade through the ocean of texts that have been published on post-Renaissance European history.

Being such a pleasure to read as it is, I find it surprising that The Story of Civilization hasn't been reprinted more often. If you can afford the expense, I would go for the Easton Press leather-bound edition, which is truly spectacular.

I went to the local library and happened upon Vol. One of this series called "Our Oriental Heritage". It was a thick book, but it was so interesting that I couldn't put it down. Therefore, I bought the entire set for my personal library through Amazon.

History may be seen as being dull but not when you read it by these 2 authors, Wil and Ariel Durant. It took them 20 years to write the entire 11 volume set. These books are so inspiring that I could not put them down, until I managed to read them all. I am thrilled to read the series and cannot recommend it enough to all history buffs. This is a power-packed 11 volume set that will keep you captivated for months, as you go through each age of civilization as if you were personally traveling in a 'time machine' and able to be present in person.

This magnum opus is a veritable treasurehouse of integral history.The authors have chosen the widest possible canvass.They have sustained the pace and momentum throughout the whole series.Their conception is on grand scale,their execution magnificent.Their holistic vision is splendidly reflected in their work.They have succeeded,in a great measure, in making it interesting.Full of vitality,interspersed by occasional flashes of humor,written in vigorous and elegant prose,this story is a sure prescription for elevation of mind.

I first encountered this series over 40 years ago as a freshman in collrge.The books were recommended by many professors to augment one's knowledge of Western European Studies.Those were the days when a student actually did his or her own work; plagiarism and cheating could lead to immediate expulsion with no possible appeal. Anyway, the books were a reliable source of "integral history", which I used time and again to "beef up" my term papers.It was only later,after graduation,that I was able to purchase a used set that rests on my bookshelf even now.Having read the set twice, I still find myself being drawn to it, mainly to read short,incisive biographies, many of which are far superior to those seen via the computer. Be forewarned that the excellent writing style is definitely not to be skim-read; every paragraph, every sentence has been written with a purpose.One is also admonished that the 11th and final volume is seemingly a mongrel, published when the authors were well,well, beyond their prime. One can purchase a set or a single book of one's preference at just about any price. Shop around and strike a deal. At the very least, you'll see the English language on display once again.

I agree completely with all the 5-star reviews. I use to hate history books. They were so dry and boring. My husband purchased this set a long time ago and encouraged me to give it a try. He said it was different. He was right. I am now on volume 4.