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The Age of Faith, Volume 4
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 61 hrs and 23 mins
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Publisher's summary
A History of Medieval Civilization (Christian, Islamic, and Judaic) from Constantine to Dante, AD 325 - 1300
The fourth volume in Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, The Age of Faith surveys the medieval achievements and modern significance of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic life and culture. Like the other volumes in the Story of Civilization series, this is a self-contained work, which at the same time fits into a comprehensive history of mankind. It includes the dramatic stories of St. Augustine, Hypatia, Justinian, Mohammed, Harun al-Rashid, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, Maimonides, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and many others, all in the perspective of integrated history. The greatest love stories in literature - of Héloise and Abélard, of Dante and Beatrice - are here retold with enthralling scholarship.
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- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history the world’s greatest conquerors have made their mark not just on the battlefield, but in the societies they have transformed. Genghis Khan conquered by arms and bravery, but he ruled by commerce and religion. He created the world’s greatest trading network and drastically lowered taxes for merchants, but he knew that if his empire was going to last, he would need something stronger and more binding than trade. He needed religion.
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Fascinating history
- By R. C. Haynes on 12-29-18
By: Jack Weatherford
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The Life and Times of Chaucer
- By: John Gardner
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exquisite biography, John Gardner brings to life Geoffrey Chaucer, illuminating his writings and their inspiration like never before. Through exhaustive research and expert storytelling, Gardner takes readers through Chaucer’s varied career - from writing The Canterbury Tales to performing diplomatic work at the Parliament - and creates a fully realized portrait of an author whose work would remake the English language forever. Written with passion and insight, this a must-listen for those interested in Chaucer and the medieval time period.
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Good book, but quoted passages are in Old English
- By Kathi on 02-26-14
By: John Gardner
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The Bright Ages
- A New History of Medieval Europe
- By: Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
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The word medieval conjures images of the “Dark Ages”. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through 10 centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them.
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Does exactly what it claims to clarify
- By Aaron Rapozo on 12-13-21
By: Matthew Gabriele, and others
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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
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Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
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A learned, well-balanced postmodern history
- By Jacobus on 11-21-12
By: Peter Brown
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Templars
- The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons
- By: Michael Haag
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
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Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades - sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church.
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Narrator ruined it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-19-17
By: Michael Haag
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Charlemagne
- By: Johannes Fried, Peter Lewis
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 17 mins
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When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.
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I really wanted to enjoy this -
- By Doris on 01-19-18
By: Johannes Fried, and others
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Not Complete Dialogues
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Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy: Voltaire and the French Enlightenment delves into the life and ideas of Voltaire, a central figure of the French Enlightenment. This volume explores Voltaire's contributions to philosophy, literature, and society, highlighting his advocacy for reason, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state. Durant's engaging narrative brings to life the vibrant era of the Enlightenment and Voltaire's enduring influence on modern thought. A must-read for anyone interested in philosophy and the history of ideas.
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Horror and randomness of war
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The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
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Grasp the important ideas that have served as the backbone of philosophy across the ages with this extraordinary 60-lecture series. This is your opportunity to explore the enormous range of philosophical perspectives and ponder the most important and enduring of human questions-without spending your life poring over dense philosophical texts.
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A Hard Review to Write
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By: Daniel N. Robinson, and others
What listeners say about The Age of Faith, Volume 4
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jonathan
- 11-15-16
Very informative
Quite lengthy at times, but totally worth the investment. Patience is a virtue. Hard to wrap your head around all the information. Be ready to bookmark!
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- KenVille
- 12-22-21
Incredible Reading
Durant's lifetime of research is obvious in this epic work, covering every angle and aspect of a bar and complex history.
And I don't think any other narrator could have given this multilingual treasure a more fitting voice.
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- Peter Y C.
- 08-05-14
Epic
Everyone should be exposed to this time period of history through this work in seeing the transformation of people groups from savages to civilized, to organized states, of states that rise and fall, and the slow but steady growth of Europe under Christianity. The blossoming of Islam and the subsequent stumbling and fall of it's luminaries sweeps before you.
What I loved is Durant's weaving - he'll tell one epic, then another of the same time period and bring back the same characters so the reader can see how they fit in a different context.
Stefan Rudnicki's narration is awesome for this work, a steady, constant, almost invisible narration allowing the story to shine through.
Loved every part of it and I'm much richer for the listen, especially for the new understanding of our culture and how it developed, albeit slowly in fits and starts.
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16 people found this helpful
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- J. mcwhirter
- 11-28-18
Bugs
Bugs in chapters xvI, XVII, and and the first three chapters of Book IV....so far.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-04-22
A history of heresies.
A history of heresies. As byzantine as the cultures and faiths it covers.
Durant's fourth volume in his "The Story of Civilization" continues its epic march through...well...everything to bring us the story of the great monotheistic faiths (and their impacts on their respective cultures) from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Durant covers everything from the rise and splintering of Islam, the Jewish diaspora, and the inevitable doctrinal hair-splitting that engulfed the Christian faith during the Middle Ages.
While Durant approaches this series from a squarely Occidentalist focus, he treats all sides with requisite respect and writes eloquently of the art and poetry of (and faith traditions) of non-Western peoples.
Here, we get Goths, Holy Roman Empires, vassals, flying buttresses, Catharists, and tonsures galore. When I say Durant covers everything, I mean it. While Durant has never been terribly interested in warfare or battles (traditional "history"), you'd be hard pressed to find a topic that Durant doesn't cover at least to some degree.
That breadth of topics is also the book's weakest point. Because Durant covers so much geographic, artistic, civilizational, religious, and temporal territory, the history is less rigorous than it otherwise might be in a more focused/limited work (contrast with volumes "The Life of Greece" and "Caesar and Christ" -- limited primarily to the Greek and Roman states). An example of this is when Durant covers the history of Scotland from 300-1300 AD in about 7 pages. William Wallace is rolling over in his grave. And don't even get me started on the vagaries of Catholic or Islamic heresies -- you'd have more luck counting the stars in the sky than keep track of them all.
Ultimately, this is a forgivable sin (an indulgence even) since Durant writes so well about so much. Another reviewer described him as a "popularizer" -- and insofar as Durant brings (and keeps) the story of Civilization alive to the general public (even if this book is 70 years old), "popularizer" ain't a bad thing to be.
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- Bill_Ben
- 08-03-20
Excellence in presentation of history
It is unfair to give only five stars for this book, when thousands of much inferior books receive five stars. But the highest possible rating is only five stars.
I listened to the superior reading by Mr. Rudnicki, and was truly impressed, especially when he pronounced foreign words correctly.
As far as Will Durant is concerned, his erudite writing and style has not been duplicated yet. This is the fourth book by Will Durant I have read, and will read all the others I have already purchased.
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- Max Osterhaus
- 03-31-16
Fantastic.
This is truly the finest of classical historiography. Durant was one of a kind and he culmination of the era just before the much needed, but much destructive fracturing of cultural and history in our critical, modern and postmodern age.
His is a delicate handling and deep understanding that ranges elegantly through kings, migrations, arts, technology, metaphysics, religion, and notably the common man or woman. And all of this in such writing as to do justice to those sensitive souls he chronicles.
The narrator is also notability masterful in his craft. His emphasis restrained but always in the right place and his pronunciations of many languages acceptable, if not always perfect.
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- Alexis Allen
- 01-03-17
Best audiobook ever (to date) 🌟
The writing is instructive and peppered with delightful details that bring warmth the the subject. The writing is excellent and you wouldn't know it wasn't published this year. It's well structured so that subjects that are perhaps less interesting to the reader are easy to skip past. S. Rudinicki is a superb talent, not just thanks to his uniquely engaging voice but also because his performance is flawless. No peculiar breaths or noise, perfect cadence, like the voice of a beloved father reading a story. I was really impressed by this production which, at 61 hours, must have been an epic undertaking. Do not hesitate on this one. It is excellent.
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- Paul H Aube
- 05-26-16
Faith, fiction of men
Compared to the previous volumes, especially Our Oriental Heritage and the Life of Greece, it is interesting to learn how religion was conceived to organize faith like the Greeks and Romans organized the city-states and government.
The narration is very well laid out to provide a very good understanding of organized faith and the comparison between christianity, islam and judaism.
It is by no means injurious to faith. More a revelation of men's tendency to control and exact power through faith.
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- Salvador
- 09-27-22
amazing book
such a wonderful book, just wish the chapters had the actual chapter labels , not too big of a deal just an inconvenience that would certainly make the experience much better and navigation much much easier.
now, the book itself is short on military history military descriptions, but the history and descriptions of medieval society in it's whole from judaic civilization to islamic civilization to the frozen mystical north is absolutely amazing. I truly felt the essence of medieval society in it's whole for a while. amazing experience. I'd highly recommend it, one of my favorites.
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1 person found this helpful