Our Oriental Heritage

The Story of Civilization, Volume 1

By: Will Durant

Narrated by: Robin Field

Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia. In this masterful work, readers will encounter:

• Sumeria, birthplace of the first cities and written laws
• the Egyptians, who perfected monumental architecture, medicine, and mummification more than 3,500 years ago
• the Babylonians, who developed astronomy and physics, and planted the seeds of Western mythology
• the Judeans, who preserved their culture forever in the immortal books of the Old Testament
• the Persians, who ruled the largest empire in recorded history before Rome
• Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophers, and Japanese Samurais

©2013 Will Durant (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Most of history is guessing... rest is predjudice

"But a nation, like an individual, can be too sensible, too practical, sane and unbearably right."
- Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

I jumped into this series with not a small amount of skepticsm. How can you not be skeptical of a project that is basically 10,000 pages, in 11 volumes, totalling about 4 million words? But I was curious. This series is ubiquitous in used bookstores. I was more than curious. It almost seemed stupidly large. That was a selling point. It also seemed nearly (11/12) designed for a year-long big book quest. My worries increased when a friend of mine suggested I abandon my copy back to a "little free library or used bookstore". But I figured I'd give Vol 1 a shot. I was apprehensive because a History of Civilization written in 1935 is going to come from a completely different perspective than the one I'm used to from contemporary historians (academic or otherwise). But that same worry also made me curious. The fact that this series was published over forty years (Vol 1 = 1935; Vol 11 = 1975) made me interested to see if/how the Durant's approach to history changed from pre-WWII to post-Vietnam.

Vol 1: "Our Oriental Heritage" is 938 pages that span:

I. The Establishment of Civilization - pages 1 to 110
II. The Near East (Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Judea, Persia, etc) - 111 to 386
III. India and Her Neighbors - 387 t0 634
IV. The Far East - 635 to 824
V. Japan - 825 to 944

The introduction almost turned me off. Durant's almost causal use of "savage" and "primative" to discuss early man and civilization irritated me, and there were brief periods where I was worried Durant was going to emerge as a fangirl of eugenics. But I also had to remember this was written by an American, white male intellectual in the middle of the 30s, almost 80 years ago. It is also a book aimed at the general reader not the academic. I kept on reader, because once engaged I'm an indulgent reader. And... it got better. Actually, it became quite good. I enjoyed his style. I felt Durant was (as much as an outsider can be) fair to most of his subjects. I enjoyed his horde of historical truisms/maxims/aphorisms that he sprinkled willy-nilly throughout the volume. I felt, after reading Vol I, like I learned a lot. It was just ambitous enough, broad enough, and interesting enough to warrent me continuing to Vol II next month. There was plenty of fluff, and I'm sure academics in any of the areas he covered could shake up his views considerably, but like Durant said: "most of history is guessing, and the rest is predjudice"

Some of my other favorite of Durant's historical aphorisms in Vol I, Section 1 The Establishment of Civilization:

"Societies are ruled by two powers: in peace by the word, in crisis by the sword" (22).
"Time sanctifies everything" (24).
"Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization" (29).
"To transmute greed into thrift, violence into argument, murder into litigation, and suicide into philosophy has been part of the task of civilization" (53).
"men are more easily ruled by imagination than by science" (56).
"It is the tendency of gods to begin as ogres and to end as loving fathers" (63).
"In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like a body and soul, in a harmonious death" (71).
"Possibly every discovery is a rediscovery" (107).

Amazing.

A wonderful chronology of man's earliest known history including Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, China, and Japan. Their kings, their rises, their falls, their artistic prowess, their innovations, their inhabitants, their differences, their gods--all you could ever hope for in establishing a foundational knowledge of early history.

History done right!

All my life, I have heard about the brilliance of the Durants, but all my life, the thick volumes of the Durants books were too much for me, regardless of the brilliance.

BUT suddenly, Audible.com has brought out the 10 volume set of The History of Civilization, each volume of which is about 500 pages. Listening is about 50 hours per volume. As I'm bedbound, 50 hours is far more manageable than 500 pages.

But the brilliance I had heard about was definitely there. The lovely, easy use of language, his ability to view civilization as more than disparate disciplines, the delightful sense of humor that pops out at the least expected time ... He overwhelmed me. For each of the peoples he discussed, he shared the scientific knowledge, the economics, art, literature as well as the who did what when that is always part of history.

It's important to recognize that this book was written in the mid 30s. The progress we have made in civil liberties in the following decades can make reading uncomfortable. Recognize it for the artifact that it is and read on.

I'm going for the full ten volumes. That is my real rating!

a masterpiece

An epic achievement of history and the art of writing. With each sentence the listener grows in knowledge and being.

Insight into the Orient and mideast

This is an excellent overview not only of mid and far eastern history, but also considers the culture and growth of each in detail. Negative: on occasion a bit more arcane detail than needed to make a point. Narrator: clear and easily understood; negative: a bit too sing-songy for my taste with
occasional jarring mispronunciations.

Detailed and Insightful

Will Durant's explanations of ancient civilizations are almost as exhilarating as it would be to witness them first hand, because he has the unique ability to infect the reader (or Audible listener) with his enthusiasm and insight while one absorbs his words.
Robin Field is an excellent narrator and very appropriate for historical non fiction because of age and wisdom one can almost hear.

dope!!!!

will Durant is the sickest historian. read it and get woke all of you illiterates

High highs and low lows

This book is a slog at times, but at its best it is a five-star book

Well done

The research put into this work is crazy ( perhaps one can argue out of date now in 2023) but that doesn't mean all of this work is false you just have to read updated materiel is all.. That aside very well done

So Great

This is the third or fourth time I have read/listened to this series and I was surprised at how much 'new' information I received this time. But this is the charm and value of Durant's awe-inspiring work - that he covers so much that it is impossible to fully enjoy in only one exposure. I hadn't heard Robin Field before, and after some initial disappointment that he wasn't Grover Gardner, I became a fan.