History

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

My straight-through reading of this mammoth 11-volume history continues. Volume VIII shares a detailed view of Europe in the 17th Century. So much war and bloodshed and atrocity, and yet brilliance too.

Let us agree that in every generation of man’s history, and almost everywhere, we find superstition, hypocrisy, corruption, cruelty, crime, and war: in the balance against them we place the long roster of poets, composers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and saints. That same species upon which poor Swift revenged the frustrations of his flesh wrote the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Bach and Handel, the odes of Keats, the Republic of Plato, the Principia of Newton, and the Ethics of Spinoza; it built the Parthenon and painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; it conceived and cherished, even if it crucified, Christ. Man did all this; let him never despair.

Will Durant

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

My quest to read all eleven volumes of Durant’s Story of Civilization continues. Volume VII has returned to the shelf with hundreds of scribbles and notes and many, many exclamation marks. If you think the world is crazy now, you ought to revisit these darker times of wholesale human butchery, religious wars and inquisitions. This has been an eye-opening and hair-raising experience.

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I finished this fourth installment of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization after three months of slow, careful reading. The Age of Faith begins with the fall of Rome and carries through the end of the Middle Ages. The writing is clear, colorful, engaging, often horrifying, and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious. Along the way, I encountered kings and popes, treachery and atrocities, saints and philosophers, economic systems, the building of cathedrals and castles, and primers on the great works of literature and philosophy across a thousand years of recorded time.

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The Age of Faith by Will DurantRead More »

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Volume III of the eleven-volume Story of Civilization by Will Durant. I knew so little about the rise and fall of Rome and the formation of Christianity before reading this. I feel so much more informed. My favorite so far!

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I paused reading this history to read The Odyssey by Homer to give me a better insight to that classic’s role in Greek history.

My mind seems most interested in philosophy these days, so my notes and highlights below tend to center on that area of the book vs. historical events, of which there were many.

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The Life of Greece by Will DurantRead More »

★★★★★ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

It took me more than twenty years to read this first volume of the epic Story of Civilization by Will Durant. Now, I hope the read the remaining ten volumes over the course of the next year. My history education is underway!

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Our Oriental Heritage by Will DurantRead More »