The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant is an eleven-volume set of books. It was written over a lifetime, and it totals two million words across nearly 10,000 pages. The series is incomplete: in the first book of the series (Our Oriental Heritage, which covers the history of the East through 1933), Mr. Durant stated that he wanted to include the history of the West through the early 20th century. However, the series ends with The Age of Napoleon since the Durants died before any additional volumes could be completed.
The first six volumes of The Story of Civilization are credited to Will Durant, with Ariel receiving recognition in the acknowledgements. In later volumes, beginning with The Age of Reason Begins, Ariel is credited as a co-author.
This volume covers Near Eastern history until the fall of the Persian Empire in the 4th century BC, and the history of India, China, and Japan up to the 1930s.
?Every chapter, every paragraph in this book will offend or amuse some patriotic or esoteric soul: the orthodox Jew will need all his ancestral patience to forgive the pages on Yahveh; the metaphysical Hindu will mourn this superficial scratching of Indian philosophy; The Chinese or Japanese sage will smile indulgently at these brief and inadequate selections from the wealth of Far Eastern literature and thought. ... Meanwhile a weary author may sympathize with Tai T?ung, who in the thirteenth century issued his ??History of Chinese Writing?? with these words: ?Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.?? (p.ix)
The Prehistoric Beginnings of Civilization ?The moulders of the world?s myths were unsuccessful husbands, for they agreed that woman was the source of all evil.? (p.70)
Persia ?For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost.? (p.265)
A Christian Epilogue On the fall of India to the Moguls: ?The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.? (p.463)
Revolution and Renewal On China in 1935: ?No victory of arms, or tyranny of alien finance, can long suppress a nation so rich in resources and vitality. The invader will lose funds or patience before the loins of China will lose virility; within a century China will have absorbed and civilized her conquerors, and will have learned all the technique of what transiently bears the name of modern industry; roads and communications will give her unity, economy and thrift will give her funds, and a strong government will give her order and peace.? (p.823)
The Struggle for Freedom "The realization of self-government was something new in the world; life without kings had not yet been dared by any great society. Out of this proud sense of independence, individual and collective, came a powerful stimulus to every enterprise of the Greeks; it was their liberty that inspired them to incredible accomplishments in arts and letters, in science and philosophy." (p.233)
The Suicide of Greece "As surprising as anything else in this civilization is the fact that it was brilliant without the aid or stimulus of women." (p.305)
The Coming of Rome ?We have tried to show that the essential cause of the Roman conquest of Greece was the disintegration of Greek civilization from within. No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself.? (p.659)
The Greek Conquest: 201 BC-146 BC ?The new generation, having inherited world mastery, had no time or inclination to defend it; that readiness for war which had characterized the Roman landowner disappeared now that ownership was concentrated in a few families and a proletariat without stake in the country filled the slums of Rome.? (p.90)
Life and Thought in the Second Century: AD 96-192 ?If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.? (p.366)
Epilogue ?Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.? (p.667-668)
The Popes in Avignon: 1309-77 "Venetian merchants invaded every market from Jerusalem to Antwerp; they traded impartially with Christians and Mohammedans, and papal excommunications fell upon them with all the force of dew upon the earth." (p.39)
Savonarola and the Republic: 1492-1534 ?But it took more than a revival of antiquity to make the Renaissance. And first of all it took money-smelly bourgeois money: ... of careful calculations, investments and loans, of interest and dividends accumulated until surplus could be spared from the pleasures of the flesh, from the purchase of senates, signories, and mistresses, to pay a Michaelangelo or a Titian to transmute wealth into beauty, and perfume a fortune with the breath of art. Money is the root of all civilization.? (p.67-68)
Science in the Age of Copernicus ?People then, as now, were judged more by their manners than by their morals; the world forgave more readily the sins that were committed with the least vulgarity and the greatest grace. Here, as in everything but artillery and theology, Italy led the way.? (p.766)
The Great Rebellion: 1625-49 ?Witches were burned, and Jesuits were taken down from the scaffold to be cut to pieces alive. The milk of human kindness flowed sluggishly in the days of Good Queen Bess.? (p.54)
Philosophy Reborn: 1564-1648 "Is Christianity dying? ... If this is so, it is the basic event of modern times, for the soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith." (p.613)
The Classic Zenith in French Literature: 1643-1715
Tragedy in the Netherlands: 1649-1715 ?It was an age of strict manners and loose morals.? (p.27) ?Like the others, he came from the middle class; the aristocracy is too interested in the art of life to spare time for the life of art.? (p.144)
This volume covers the period of the Age of Enlightenment, as exemplified by Voltaire, focusing on the period between 1715 and 1756 in France, Britain, and Germany.
Voltaire in France ?Women, when on display, dressed as in our wondering youth, when the female structure was a breathless mystery costly to behold.? (p.75)
The Story of Civilization has been criticized by some for simplifications, rash judgments colored by personal convictions, and story-telling, and described as a careless dabbling in historical scholarship. Professor J. H. Plumb's opinion on the series was that ?historical truth? can rarely be achieved outside the professional world [of historians].?[2].
The counter to such criticism is that Durant?s purpose in writing the series was not to create a definitive scholarly production but to make a large amount of information accessible and comprehensible to the educated public in the form of a comprehensive "composite history." Given the massive undertaking in creating these 11 volumes over 50 years, errors and incompleteness have occurred; yet for an attempt as large in breadth of time and scope as this, there are no similar works to compare.
As Durant says in the preface to his first work, Our Oriental Heritage:
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