Will Durant - The Story of Civilization 01 - Our Oriental Heritage
"Every chapter, every paragraph in this book will offend or amuse some patriotic or esoteric soul: the orthodox Jew will need all his ancestral patience to forgive the pages on Yahveh; the metaphysical Hindu will mourn this superficial scratching of Indian philosophy; The Chinese or Japanese sage will smile indulgently at these brief and inadequate selections from the wealth of Far Eastern literature and thought. ... Meanwhile a weary author may sympathize with Tai T’ung, who in the thirteenth century issued his "History of Chinese Writing" with these words: "Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished." (p.ix)

This volume covers "The Orient." In 1935, this term referred to all of history east of Greece or earlier than Homer.

Will Durant - The Story of Civilization 02 - The Life of Greece
Volume 2 of The Story of Civilization, the Durants' dynamic synthesis of world history, deals with Greek civilization. THE LIFE OF GREECE tells the whole story of Hellas, from the days of Crete's vast Aegean empire to the Roman conquest.
The Durants' picture of 5th-century Athens is a masterpiece of compression, synthesizing the high spots and highlighting the significance of what many consider the most fruitful epoch in history.
"Tribute must be paid not merely to the immense learning which has gone into the making of the book but to the ease of its style and particularly the Durants' gift of concise, epigrammatic statement." (The New Yorker)