jamierubin.netJamie Todd Rubin – Writer, Coder, Avid Reader

Jamie Todd Rubin Writer, Coder, Avid Reader Menu About/Contact About Me Contact Press Kit Site Policies Guest posts, link sharing, etc. Reprint Request Policy Why I Don’t Update Old Posts How I became a professional science fiction writer Bibliography Blog Series Practically Paperless with Obsidian Going Paperless Vacation in the Golden Age Science Fiction Age re-read Using Scrivener What I Have Read Since 1996 Curated Index to the Blog Introducing The Ancient and the Ultimate on Substack April 29, 2024 Jamie Todd Rubin 1 comment I know what you’re thinking . Another Substack newsletter? Yes, I have a Substack newsletter that will debut tomorrow. It’s called The Ancient and the Ultimate” and it’s a place where I plan to focus specifically on writing about my reading. I describe it as follows: I have an insatiable curiosity about the world around me. Reading feeds that curiosity and builds upon it. Old questions are answered and new ones arise. Frequently, I try to apply what I read to life in some practical way. I wanted a place where I can write about this curiosity, where it leads me, and what I learn from it. If you are interested, you can subscribe here . A few notes: Unlike many Substack newsletters, mine is totally free, just like this blog. There isn’t even a paid subscription option. This blog is not going away. I still hope to continue writing here. although clearly, I haven’t been writing here much lately. Sometimes, a change of venue helps with getting the words flowing again. When I do write here, it will be less about what I am reading and more about the random stuff that I’ve always written about. I wanted to carve out a separate place where I could write about my reading exclusively. Why The Ancient and the Ultimate”? I wrote about it here . Recall that I had some thoughts on Substack a few years ago. The newsletter is a place for me to experiment a bit. I have no idea if it will work out, or if anyone will read it, but I had no idea if anyone would read what I wrote here when I started writing online back in 2005. Time will tell. Please feel no obligation to subscribe, just because you read here. I’m announcing it here because it seemed weird and awkward not to say anything about it at all — almost like I’d be cheating on you all somehow. Indeed, that’s how I felt about it for a while. And then I remembered that when I was writing fiction, I didn’t write exclusively for one magazine. I wrote for as many as I could. That’s what happens when you love to write. Did you enjoy this post? If so, consider subscribing to the blog using the form below or clicking on the button below to follow the blog. And consider telling a friend about it. Already a reader or subscriber to the blog? Thanks for reading! Follow Jamie Todd Rubin on WordPress.com Type your email… Subscribe Share this: Twitter Facebook Pocket Reddit Email More Tumblr Pinterest Like this: Like Loading... blogs My Story of Civilization March 19, 2024 March 20, 2024 Jamie Todd Rubin 2 comments i. A few days ago, I finished reading The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant and Ariel Durant, the final entry in their 11-volume Story of Civilization series. It took me just shy of a quarter century to get through the books. Combined, they are the best history books I have ever read. It was through Isaac Asimov’s autobiography that I first discovered Will Durant, sometime in 1995. In In Memory Yet Green , Asimov wrote about how in the summer of 1945 he was about to leave the house for a meeting with his draft board: I was reading a copy of Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ , the third volume of his history of civilization and Gertrude was ironing some clothes. The radio stopped its regular programming for an emergency bulletin: The United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Asimov added a footnote to this passage about Durant’s series: I read each volume as it came out. After I had read the first one and heard he was planning a multivolume history–five volumes was the original plan–I felt worried. I knew he was in his forties and I carefully noted in my diary that I hoped he would live long enough to complete the set. He did. (I’ve had similar worries about Robert A. Caro, hoping he will live long enough to finish the final volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson.) I read the books slightly out of order: The Life of Greece (1/16/2000) Our Oriental Heritage (2/3/2008) Caesar and Christ (8/7/2010) Caesar and Christ (12/27/2014) The Age of Faith (6/22/2018) The Renaissance (1/4/2019) The Reformation (5/23/2020) The Age of Reason Begins: The Story of Civilization, Vol 7 (10/3/2020) The Age of Louis XIV (5/17/2022) The Age of Voltaire (5/22/2022) Rousseau and Revolution (3/9/2024) The Age of Napoleon (3/16/2024) I was certain I’d read Our Oriental Heritage first, and was surprised to see it second on the list. I dug into some old diaries to affirm my memory, and sure enough, I was right–sort of. On May 4, 1999, I wrote: Finished Fact and Fancy this morning and started right in on Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage , the first volume of his Story of Civilization.” The book is 440,000 words long… it will take me about 21 days to finish the book… So why is Life of Greece first on the list? It turns out, I never finished that initial attempt to read Our Oriental Heritage and I don’t count a book on my list if I don’t finish it. I didn’t finish it because shortly after I started it, I began taking flying lessons and I set most of my reading aside for a time to focus on flying airplanes. As I read the last lines of Napoleon , I tried and failed to remember when and how I first obtained the books. Back to the diary I went, and found that I bought my first Durant books on April 10, 1999: Late in the afternoon I drove over to the Iliad Bookshop where I bought 3 used volumes of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization” series for just under $20. The volumes I got were The Life of Greece (Vol II); The Age of Faith (Vol IV); and The Renaissance (Vol VII) When did I get Our Oriental Heritage? It had to have been before May 4, 1999. Some more digging and, much to my surprise, I found the following on April 19, 1999: Grandpa called tonight–he said he had a surprise for me–and then proceeded to tell me he picked up Vols, I, III, and VI of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization” series for me at a used bookshop in Nyack. Between May 4, 1999 and the day I finished the final volume of the series, 9,063 days elapsed, or 24 years, 9 months and 28 days. The series tops off around 13,000 pages, which puts it somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million words. That’s a lot of reading. In fact, it turns out there were years in which the total amount I read was less than 13,000 pages, as the chart below indicates (the red dashed line shows 13,000 pages). I never read more than two of the volumes in a single year, reading one in 2000, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2019. I read two volumes in 2020, 2022 and 2024. Of the 11 volumes, I’ve read two of them twice: The Life of Greece and Caesar and Christ . ii. As Asimov mentioned, the Durants’ original plan was for five books. The scope increased with each successive volume until their tenth, Rousseau and Revolution , published in 1967, in which they concluded with the following envoi: This is the concluding volume of that Story of Civilization to which we devoted ourselves in 1929, and which has been the daily chore and solace of our lives ever since[Ellipsis] We shall not sin at such length again; but if we manage to elude the Reaper for another year or two we hope to offer a summarizing essay on The Lessons of History”. True to their word, they did write The Lessons of History , published in 1968 (which I read in 2019, and of which I have a signed copy ). Then Rousseau and Revolution won the Pulitzer for General Nonfiction, and I imagine that, coupled with what must have seemed like boredom to the globe-trotting Durants, decided them to head back to the typewriter for one more...