the story of civilization by will & ariel durant

If your brain is up to it, there is no greater favor you can do for yourself than to read these books. It has only been a few weeks since I finished 'The Age of Napoleon' and I am looking at 'Our Oriental Heritage' with hungry eyes. If that sentence speaks to you, then you are going to start loving these volumes on page one, and you will never stop loving them.

If you are the kind of person who looks at that second quote and feels not only the weight of what it says, but the beauty in the way it is written, then you are going to love these books. 'One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.' He spent more than fifty years writing his critically acclaimed eleven-volume series, The Story of Civilization (the later volumes written in conjunction with his wife, Ariel). 'Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.' Will Durant (18851981) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1968) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977). The writing is done with the eloquence of a great bard or statesman - behold, just two quotes among thousands: By the time I finished book 11 in February of 2019, I felt like my whole entire life (and language) had been upgraded in a deep and meaningful way. I didn't make it halfway through the first book before I realized that there was simply too much that was quotable. When I first started reading the series in March of 2018, it was my intent to keep a little book of quotes. But, forgiving those shortcomings, the work.the work is amazing. Yes, the books have a fair share of misogyny and racism, homophobia and anti-communist propagandizing as one might expect from anything published during it's tenor.

As full of wonder and quotable prose as any other work you will ever read.

The story of civilization by will & ariel durant