Product Review

Here is the first volume of the 'Story of Civilization,' 'Our Oriental Heritage'. This volume deals first with the establishment of civilization, then takes up, in rich fascinating detail, the color complex dramas of the Near East, India and her neighbors, and the Far East. The story is carried up to mid-1930s.

Every one of the thousands of facts in this volume have been twice checked. It begins with a chapter on the nature and conditions of civilization: offers a 109-page Introduction on 'The Establishment of Civilization' ...an attempt to meet Voltaire's demand: 'I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.' It goes on to record the cultural history...the economic and political organization, the science and art, the religion and morals, the literature and philosophy, the customs and manners...of Sumeria, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Judea, and Persia to their conquest by Alexander; and narrates the history of civilization in India from the Vedas to Mahatma Gandhi, in China from Confucius to Chiang Kai-shek, and in Japan from the earliest times to mid-1930s.