Written by Will Durant - Amy Durant
Read by Pseudonym: Alexander Adams (Grover Gardner)
Format: MP3 The Story of Civilization is an excellent history and the most complete result of the ambitious goal of writing a world history. The audiobooks are organized in such a way that they can be read as individual works or be listened to 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. 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. 01. Our Oriental Heritage - This volume covers Near Eastern history until the fall of the Persian Empire, and the history of India, China, and Japan to the 1930s. 02. The Life of Greece - This volume covers Ancient Greece and the Hellenistic Near East down to the Roman conquest. 03. Caesar and Christ - The volume covers the history of Rome and of Christianity until the time of Constantine the Great. 04. The Age of Faith - This volume covers the Middle Ages in both Europe and the Near East, from the time of Constantine to that of Dante. 05. The Renaissance - This volume covers the history of Italy from c.1300 to the mid 16th century, focusing on the Italian Renaissance. 06. The Reformation - This volume covers the history of Europe outside of Italy from around 1300 to 1564, focusing on the Protestant Reformation. 07.The Age of Reason Begins - This volume covers the history of Europe and the Near East from 1559 to 1648. 08.The Age of Louis XIV - This volume covers the period of Louis XIV of France in Europe and the Near East. 09.The Age of Voltaire - 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. 10.Rousseau and Revolution - This volume centers on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his times.It received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1968. 11.The Age of Napoleon - This volume centers on Napoleon I of France and his times.