The entire series of the Durant's Story of Civilization can be found on interenet archives LINK
Some are only for 14 day borrow, but thanks to the Library of India posting their books there, many can be downloaded to read at leisure, since they are too long to read in 14 days.
And for those of us who listen to audiobooks/ lectures (I play them in the background when I sleep, to lessen the noise of cars and dogs and crowing roosters during the night), they also have the audiobook versions of some of these available. LINK
The entire series can also be found on Youtube. But this means you have to play the video, or as I do, download them as audio and/or rip them to an mp3
True, they are old fashioned, western centric and not entirely PC, and usually have a bias against religion, but they are readable: and that in itself is a recommendation for those of us layfolk who want to learn history.
and what is ignored by the PC is that once you have a basic knowledge, you can then go and build upon that knowledge for more nuance or other points of view.
Durant's history not only includes the usual kings/ empire/ battles, but discusses the ideas of those civilizations.
For example, in Vol one, he not only discussed the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, but he had a description of the bible and he includes famous quotes from history and poetry.
There are three things too wonderful for me, four that I cannot understand:
The way of an eagle in the air;
the way of a serpent upon a rock;
the way of a ship in the midst of the sea;
and the way of a man with a maid.
The Bible and Christian religion is part of the heritage of Western civilization, but since Bible reading was removed from public schools, one wonders if the kids are allowed to learn the stories or the famous quotes that their elders were taught routinely.
without this basic knowledge, much of the classic literature references will have to be explained to them. And of course, it makes them vulnerable to the trendy "new atheists" who quote out of context to emphasize only the faults of religion, and use straw man arguments to ridicule today's believers.
I read that the Russian and other communist countries taught anti religion but that reading the great Russian writers like Tolstoy kept the faith alive.
This used to be true for the West, but now it is the time of the great forgetting.
It's a direct line that is missed; Martin Luther King was inspired by Ghandi, who was inspired by Tolstoy, who was inspired by Jesus.
but instead, the history is that of Marxism that not only falsifies history but inspires hatred.
But like the story of how the Irish Saved Civilization remind us, the seeds of renewal might be found in the most likely places
“What will be lost, and what saved, of our civilization probably lies beyond our powers to decide. No human group has ever figured out how to design its future. That future may be germinating today not in a boardroom in London or an office in Washington or a bank in Tokyo, but in some antic outpost or other -- a kindly British orphanage in the grim foothills of Peru, a house for the dying in a back street of Calcutta run by a fiercely single-minded Albanian nun, an easy-going French medical team at the starving edge of the Sahel, a mission to Somalia by Irish social workers who remember their own Great Hunger, a nursery program to assist convict-mothers at a New York Prison -- in some unheralded corner where a great-hearted human being is committed to loving outcasts in an extraordinary way.” ― Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization:.
Sigh.
Mr DeSantis, call your office. There are things that need to be taught.
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