Durant's Heroes of History - Anyone use? What age?

[shawthorne44]

I just noticed that there is a posthumous book "Heroes of History" by Will Durant.  Just one book written as a summary of his Civilization series.  Our library has the audiobook that we can stream.    I recently got his Philosophy book and the Civilization series from Audible.   DD is 10, so too young, but DH and I are going to listen to those now and have them for her high school.   But what about the Heroes book?  I am looking for an all-history book to use as a review before we start the logic stage of history.  Would the audiobook be too old for her?   

 

[shawthorne44]

I found this amusing.    The manuscript was found in his Granddaughter's garage.   

 

[caffeineandbooks]

Thank you for this!  Will Durant was just recently recommended to me but when I saw the length of the Civilization series I shelved the idea for now.  Off to check out the Heroes title you mentioned!

[shawthorne44]

The Civilization series audiobooks look reasonable for high school.  11 volumes, so figure 3 per year.  The first three are 50-something hours, 36.5 hours and 32.5 hours.  They are taking forever and a day to download, but then our computer and internet aren't that great.  My thought right now is to have DD take history at the local community college and then listen to these as balance and more comprehensive.    A brilliant friend of ours took a college course on the entire series.   Even he fell behind in the reading. We were reminded of Durant when he offered us his books.  

I hope someone here has read the Heroes book.  

[PeterPan]

I have the Heroes book, don't remember when I picked it up. I think your idea for use is fine. Durant's full series is THICK, oh my. I didn't realize there were audios. I have most of the volumes (maybe missing one?) and was discouraged that I couldn't use it with ds. The audio could be great. But that would be a major accomplishment, that's for sure.

 

[PeterPan]

Here, I've pulled it. What do you want to know? The reading level is probably the same as the full volume set. It's decidedly *not* a kid's book or an attempt to make history accessible to kids. It's adult level, a survey, written with the same beautiful complex prose as his longer works. Looking at the toc, it goes through Shakespeare and Bacon.

"And of course there is a story of Dido, Queen of Carthage; her passionate surrender to Aeneas' strong arms; his leaving her to follow his assumed destiny to establish Rome; her despondent plunge alive into a funeral pyre." 

That's just a random sentence from chapter 11 on the Roman Empire. So the listener would benefit from prior knowledge (having worked through all the volumes of SOTW, for instance) and comfortable comprehension of complex syntax. It uses words like beneficence and throws in latin and greek terms that it does define. It's decidedly adult level.

My dd was reading adult level history around that age, probably a bit later. So 6th or 7th? 10 seems a bit young to me, but who am I to say? If your dc functions at that level, have at it. My dd did for areas of particular interest, but it slowed down when it was a longer work. I think you could comfortably use it with advanced student in high school (for the right use, for a one year survey that was not AP level) and not be dumbing down. 

[PeterPan]

Oh that's wacky. I tried popping that sample into a lexile analyzer, and it assigned 600-800 to the first chunk, not even considering the whole thing. It's going to be quite high.

Ran it through a readability engine and it says the Gunning Fog index is 10.1. Apparently that indicates the number of years of formal education a person needs to understand the text on the first reading.

[shawthorne44]

That is so helpful!    I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History.   So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book.  She does love love love audiobooks.   Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else  might have blogged about it.   Nope.  Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK.    

[shawthorne44]

That is so helpful!    I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History.   So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book.  She does love love love audiobooks.   Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else  might have blogged about it.   Nope.  Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK.    

On her maturity-level.    The words should be fine.   Subject matter, I'm not sure.  For example, she cried through SOTW slavery.  She was appalled at SOTW Incas, or was it the Horrible History Incas?   She'd declared herself done with history for awhile after "Women in Medieval Times" (or something like that)  Some of 20th century was glossed over.   So, what she knows about the Nazis is that they "Were worse than the Incas and your great-grandfather fought against them"   

Edited December 16, 2020 by shawthorne44

[caffeineandbooks]

5 hours ago, shawthorne44 said:

That is so helpful!    I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History.   So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book.  She does love love love audiobooks.   Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else  might have blogged about it.   Nope.  Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK.    

Consider using quotation marks in your google search.  If you put 

homeschooling will durant

Google will look for any page that has those three words in any order.  However, if you put

homeschool "will durant"

Google will only tell you about pages that contain both the word "homeschool" and the exact phrase "will durant".  It looks to me like there are at least a couple of homeschool blogs that refer to the author so you might find what you're looking for that way.

[PeterPan]

On 12/16/2020 at 3:42 PM, shawthorne44 said:

That is so helpful!    I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History.   So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book.  She does love love love audiobooks.   Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else  might have blogged about it.   Nope.  Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK.    

On her maturity-level.    The words should be fine.   Subject matter, I'm not sure.  For example, she cried through SOTW slavery.  She was appalled at SOTW Incas, or was it the Horrible History Incas?   She'd declared herself done with history for awhile after "Women in Medieval Times" (or something like that)  Some of 20th century was glossed over.   So, what she knows about the Nazis is that they "Were worse than the Incas and your great-grandfather fought against them"   

It's way overkill. You might try Great Courses instead.

[shawthorne44]

On 12/16/2020 at 8:42 PM, caffeineandbooks said:

Google will only tell you about pages that contain both the word "homeschool" and the exact phrase "will durant".  It looks to me like there are at least a couple of homeschool blogs that refer to the author so you might find what you're looking for that way.

 

That is so helpful!  I used to be good at searches back when I had to use the library.   That skill apparently completely atrophied.  

[shawthorne44]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:36 PM, PeterPan said:

It's way overkill. You might try Great Courses instead.

 

Overkill?!?   With History.    I really don't understand that concept.  

I have a STEM brain and my History education in school was worthless, and I went to a 'good' school.  For example all I needed to know for world history from the 20th century was which country fought with us in one world war and against us in the other.   So, I've spent a good part of my non-fiction reading as an adult on history.  I think the rigorous history eduation is what first attracted me to WTM.    Reading the physical books, that might be overkill.   But the audiobooks shouldn't be too bad.  The first three books are 120 hours.  That shouldn't be too hard to finish in a year.  We could probably mostly finish one book during the drive for the vacation each year.