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In this collection of biographical and historical sketches drawn from an unfinished manuscript discovered two decades after his death, Will Durant celebrates historical figures whose examples demonstrate that humans can, "when sufficiently inspired, rise to levels of greatness with the gods themselves." Durant (1885-1981), the principal author of The Story of Civilization, saw history as a branch of philosophy, and he peppered his stories of great historical actors and events with moral lessons and observed patterns ("One of the most regular sequences in history is that a period of pagan license is followed by an age of puritan restraint and moral discipline"). These brief lectures, touching on leaders and innovators, such as Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo da Vinci, and Martin Luther, afford him plenty of opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the past and to offer models for his readers to study and emulate. Like Durant's other work, this book has an old-fashioned air about it: it is Eurocentric to the core, and it makes almost no mention of women, who surely contributed to the rise of civilizations. Still, fans of Durant's brand of sweeping narrative history will enjoy having these final words from the master. --Gregory McNamee
 
 Customer Reviews 
Excellent introduction to Will Durant
Rating: 
I have never read his acclaimed Story of Civilization series in its entirety. I have however glanced through them from time to time to look up information. The book entitled "Rosseau & Revolution" was instrumental for me when I wrote my final paper for my B.A. in History. I decided to pick this up because I was not yet ready to commit myself to the 11 volume set. I figured this was a good starting point to get an idea of whether or not I would enjoy the larger work.
What needs to be understood is that this is NOT a condensed version of the Story of Civilization. It does follow the time arc of the Story of Civilization. It has a completely different aim. This book focuses on the individuals of civilization. He starts off with the Eastern Philosophers such as in his words "the boy called Siddartha Gautama" and finishes with the great Shakespeare. Now, don't get me wrong, a book of this size can never do justice to the individuals written about here whether it is Virgil or Leonardo and so forth. But this book was not intended to be for anyone but the general reader. He paints a wonderful picture of the achievements of the various individuals he discusses. His love for history is abundantly clear in his writing.
The only thing that kept me from giving it a perfect 5 star rating is that the book is not finished, nor will it ever be. Durant was unable to finish the final 2 chapters before his death. Second, while his literary style is unparalleled among writers of history, the writing feels a bit more disjointed as the book moves towards the later chapters. I suspect he probably was planning to polish the writing a bit more until he ran out of time. But the overall quality of the information presented here does not lose its importance. It's more of a personal criticism on my part.
For anyone with an interest in world history or curiosity about Will Durant, this is a highly recommended book. There was no one who could paint such a vivid picture of history like Will could.
Must Read
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Profound and thought-provoking. A really wonderful read, particularly for those who are well-read in the underlying topics he covers. Immersing yourself in his thought process is more important than accepting his conclusions.
Good, but not exactly what I though it was
Rating:
When I was a boy I remember my father receiving the complete Story of Civilization series by Will Durant and his enthusiasm for them, and for the man. To my impressionable young self the books became tinged with a sense of awe and power until they seemed like religious icons. It was like we had a piece of the Shroud of Turin or something equivalent. In these books was....everything. The entire history of the world. That was so amazing. Yet even more amazing to my eight year-old mind was the fact that ONE man knew everything. And he wrote it down! How can one man know everything? The entire and complete history of the world? That was pretty impressive to my young self and it is still pretty impressive to my middle-aged self. I was a little young at 8 years old to tackle the Story of Civilization, and my dad wasn't too keen on me thumbing through his treasures, but I decided that someday I would read those books. I recalled that resolve a few months ago and decided to order the Story of Civilization from Amazon. I was disappointed to find that I can't get hardback versions right now, and I don't see how they could ever work as paperbacks, so I'll have to keep haunting garage sales and used bookstores for now.
I have always thought that I should someday like to write a book about heroes through history, those men and women who through their wisdom, compassion, character and their heroic actions or nature have influenced the world for the better. I was somewhat disappointed when I was looking for the History of Civilization hardbacks to discover that Will Durant had already written Heroes of History. Darn it. But I will probably never get around to it and I was sure Mr. Durant could do a better job anyway so I just ordered his version.
Apparently Mr. Durant made a number of audio essays in the seventies in a prescient anticipation of books on tape. These audio tapes were condensed lectures meant to inform, educate, and entertain the public and to be more accessible to the general public than the Story of Civilization books which are somewhat formidable and daunting to your average American and to my 8 year old self. Mr. Durant adapted those audio tapes later into what amounts to a very condensed and abridged version of his larger work. Essentially he cut the complete version of his Story of Civilization from what must be about 20,000 pages down to 300. That is this book. It is not what I thought it was though. I was hoping that he had picked what he considered the 100 most heroic figures in history and written their stories.
Despite this book not being what I thought it was, I did sit down and read most of it today. I am of mixed minds on this book. On the one hand the man is a genius, writes extremely well (particularly so since he was over ninety when he drafted this book), and he is easily readable, clear, and thought-provoking. I did not intend to read the whole book today, but I kind of just kept going, even when I didn't mean to do so, which is a testament both to his skill and the fact that his writing is interesting as well as informative.
On the other hand, you can't really condense the Story of Civilization to 300 pages and when you try you run the risk of having to leave out whole swathes of history and even critical information about the periods you do talk about. I understand the problem though. He is trying to teach as much as he can to someone in 300 pages before that someone loses interest and wanders away. The book is also a little choppy because the chapters are actually adapted from the audiotapes and there are segues which, while they may work fine in a fireside chat context, are more than a little jarring in book format.
So, in my humble opinion, Durant is a genius and a pleasure to read, even compellingly readable, but this book is not what I thought it was (that's assuredly my fault for not reading the description and just leaping to a conclusion from the title) and I am not sure how well this book actually works. I actually want to read his entire work and always have, and reading this kind of choppy overview just confirmed that desire even more. Durant is great, I am going to read the whole history (my dad didn't, hah!), and I am going to love it. But since I am going to do the whole thing I really don't need the condensed version which, through no real fault of Durant's, just doesn't work that well. There is just no way to put the whole history of the world in 300 pages, so you have to leave things out, and as soon as you do that people are going to start second-guessing you about your editorial decisions. For example, I can't figure out why 12th century troubadors are worthy of making the cut but Leonidas and the Byzantine and Ottoman empires do not.
My advice: buy the whole history not the condensed version. If you don't want to do the entire Story of Civilization with me then this is a fine and compelling introduction to Durant. Just be warned that it isn't really about heroes, and that at 300 pages you are going to miss out on a lot of history but what you do get is fascinating and very readable.
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