Will Durant wrote broad histories of philosophy and civilisation for general readers, often working later with his wife, Ariel Durant. The Story of Philosophy introduces thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche through biography, intellectual context and summaries of their major ideas. The much larger Story of Civilization series ranges from ancient societies through European history, combining politics, religion, art, literature and biography across eleven volumes. The Lessons of History, written with Ariel Durant, distils recurring patterns they believed could be seen across their historical work. Durant’s prose is fluent and panoramic, but the breadth of these books means their interpretations and scholarship reflect the period in which they were written and should not replace current specialist histories. The Story of Philosophy is the easiest entry into Durant, while the Story of Civilization shows the full scale of his ambition; both are best treated as classic twentieth-century syntheses whose broad interpretations should be checked against newer specialist scholarship. Read more Less
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