History Book Recommendations

[Jive One]

Hey all, I've recently read the first few volumes of the Durants' The Story of Civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization) and am now looking for something similar but with a more specific focus. Can anyone recommend a large(probably multi-volume) and comprehensive history of China, India, or ancient Egypt? Best of all would be if the work includes discussion of cultural and economic aspects instead of only focusing on names and dates.

I understand that Cambridge publishes several histories like this, does anyone have any experience with them? Do they include articles on things like art, architecture, philosophy, economics, etc. like the Story of Civilization series? Any other potential works out there I should consider?

[JBI]

Try the Cambridge histories of Ancient China and China, and Japan. There is a large section from Cambridge on regional histories. These generally are considered good works of scholarship, and combined efforts of the top (usually European) scholars in the field.

Harvard and the University of Chicago also publish a lot of histories. Harvard's are hit and miss depending on the field, sometimes they are too simple (for the average reader), or too ideological (for the postmodern reader).

[bIGwIRE]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the works of Herodotus. His work is a combination of history and storytelling, and has some sections dedicated to ancient Egypt. Fascinating, and essential reading, in my opinion.

[Jive One]

Thank you for the suggestions so far. Herodotus is a great starting point and it looks like I can subscribe to read the Cambridge histories online so I'll be looking into those as well.

[lawpark]

Cambridge histories are like traditional Chinese histories - more intended as reference works rather than something you read cover to cover. I wish I had the subscription to Cambridge histories online!

My favorite is now a classic work - Marshall Hodgon's Venture of Islam.