Our Oriental Heritage; being a history of civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China and Japan from the beginning to our own day, with an introduction on the nature and foundations of civilization

Plot

This volume covers Near Eastern history until the fall of the Persian Empire in the 330s BC, and the history of India, China, and Japan up to the 1930s.
“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.’”