Since high school, I’ve been an enormous fan of Will (and Ariel) Durant’s eleven volume series. Once free with your Book Of The Month club membership, now offered at better used book shops.
Read it twice, back in the days when I had the time and interest. Several of my favourite quotes are by Durant. (Nothing is often an excellent thing to do and always an excellent thing to say).
Given the sweeping and ambitious nature of his life’s work, it surprised me many modern historians don’t like the series, considering it overly popular. Naturally, one could sub specialize about any historical topic. My question: is this just sour grapes? Are there a lot of inaccuracies? Have you read any of the volumes (Our Oriental Heritage, The Age of Reason up to The Age of Napoleon) and did you like them?
I used to own the set, decades ago, and enjoyed it immensely. I think the disparaging remarks are due to some people’s attitude toward anything that’s popular with the hoi polloi.
There was an article on the tv show “Jeopardy” in Sports Illustrated in 1989. One of the researchers for the questions said the Durant books belonged in the Trivia Hell corner for their inaccuracies.
If you do decide to keep an eye out for it, you should note that the title is The Story of Civilization (not “History”), although you probably saw that in wikipedia as well.
I tried to read it a few years ago. I forget how many volumes I got through, but it eventually became too daunting. It’s fairly readable, as I recall, but I was really attempting to do it more as a project to see whether I could get through the whole thing, than as something that would really teach me very much. I do seem to remember, in terms of “dated” attitudes, that I found Durant’s introduction in the first volume rather forward-thinking. As I recall, he argued against using terms like “primitive” and “savage” to refer to less-developed cultures, which struck me at the time as a fairly progressive way of looking at things, particularly considering the time it was written.
I also recall one line that struck me as genuinely funny, and has always stuck with me. In the chapter titled “Roman Law,” there was a footnote that said, “This chapter will be of no use to lawyers, and of no interest to anyone else.”
It covers ancient times to about 1815, and has thus aged quite well as Durant died before he could bring it up to his time. Very readable, and not less scholarly than other histories I’ve read.
Google Will Durant quotes and you’ll find lots of interesting quotes and considerable insight.
If you enjoyed that, you might like Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, a fascinating, at-the-gallop pop anthropology book about the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture, and the development of empires, money and written language. Quite interesting, I thought.