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<p align="left">This is volume one of Will and Ariel Durant's amazing eleven-part series 'The Story of Civilization'. Everyone, EVERYONE, with any kind of interest whatsover in humanity and society should read this book. It is beautifully and compellingly written. It's scope is admirably broad and, as such, it makes the perfect starting point for anyone who wants a comprehensive overall view of ancient anr oriental societies before embarking upon more detailed study. <br />If you have never read Durant, then you are in for a treat. Prepare to begin an amazing journey. <br />Review: <br />OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE, the first volume in the series, begins, appropriately enough, with the author's definition of civilization, not essentially different from that of Samuel Huntington and his CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS (1996), and then reconstructs, with a ready admission of fantasy, its probable origins in prehistory. The history proper begins with Sumer in a solid, but somewhat routine account, and moves on to Egypt, only recently opened up to the West at the time of his first publication (1935). As the excavations of great tombs were still fresh in memory, the account here can be read in the spirit of "what we know now." Moving on to Babylonia and the Code of Hammurabi, Durant hits his stride: we begin to see, hear and feel the society in our mind and imagination, as in the "trial by ordeal" or the "lex talionis" (the law of an eye for an eye). With a retelling of the great epics of Ishtar and Gilgamesh we are uplifted, then hear the moan of a proto-Job and the lament of a proto-Ecclesiastes, prior to witnessing the fall of Nebuchadrezzar and the crumbling of Babylon. The chapter on Assyria follows as a stunning masterpiece, not just a chronicle of massacres, eye-gaugings and tongue-extractions, but a meditation on cruelty and culture, empire and decadence, revelation and madness, glory and transience. Next comes Judea, with its gods and prophesies, where Durant, with his Jesuit education, is completely at home. For the first time in my life I have seen the order and context of the Old Testament. Durant's breakdown of Yahweh I and II, Isaiah I and II, and the Ten Commandments today might be called a deconstruction, but it is wonderfully clear, supremely knowledgeable and wisely both devastating and humane. If only history had been like this in high school and college, how much I would have learned!<br /><br /><a href="http://depositfiles.com/files/mrcilyucm">http://depositfiles.com/files/mrcilyucm</a><br /><br /> http://rapidshare.com/files/189635806/StorCiv1.rar </p>