Last month I finally finished reading & listening through the entirety of The Story of Civilization. It’s a huge set of books going from the (known) beginnings of civilization up unto the death of Napoleon – the first one came out in 1935, the last one in 1975. Of course I’ve forgotten most of it already, but still it gave me a better understanding of our history and, probably more importantly; hunger for more knowledge.

I started reading it four years ago, during the development of our game (re)format: Z.

The core of the game was 500 years of reformation in Zurich, and since I was the project lead, overseeing the story and reviewing the game with our experts, I wanted to make sure to understand the whole topic as good as possible.

To be honest – I didn’t really know much about the reformation, so I had a lot of catch-up to do. Good thing that my uncle was always interested in what I was doing and had just what I needed: a book about the reformation by Will & Ariel Durant. I went through the book on my train-rides and developed an understanding not only of the local reformation, but also how it was intertwined with everything else that was going on in Europe at that time.

We finished (re)format Z: later the same year – sadly, my uncle passed away before the release of the game. He bequeathed the whole set to me, and so I didn’t stop reading – and later listening – through the books. If you want to learn more about our history (sadly mostly focussed on Europe & the middle East) I can definitely recommend it.