For recent reviews of Will
Durant's new book Heroes of
History, please following the
link here.
For recent reviews of the
new Will Durant book The
Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time,
please following the link here.
Will Durant produced a towering
creation with his 11-volume "Story of
Civilization" and his legacy will grow with the
years. Will and Ariel Durant were explorers and
discoverers who approached each phase of history as
if it were new terrain. They prized history, but
never got lost in it. Will made no attempt to hide
his playfulness and was a great fan of the Los
Angeles Dodgers. Two years ago he took my wife and me
to a Dodger game. There were easily 45,000 people
there, and it struck me that Will Durant was the only
man in the ball park in a stiff white shirt, black
tie and black suit. He had this scorecard on his lap
and he kept mumbling about what the players were
doing wrong. The mumbling got louder and louder. I
said, "Will, how is it you never got into
baseball management?" And Will said, "I
didn’t have the right salivary glands –
ever see how often those guys spit in the
ballpark?" I then asked, "Will, how old are
you – 94 or 95?" "I’m 94,"
Durant replied, with a twinkle in his eye, "do
you think I’d be doing something as frivolous as
this if I were 95?"
-- Norman
Cousins, former editor of Saturday
Review
Will and Ariel Durant
have been together for 65 years of affection, work,
debate, collaboration and comradeship. They are
living proof that love is a civilizing impulse and an
enduring one, provided lovers are kept busy, creative
and individual. The great quality of Will
Durant’s writing style is his humane and
humanizing approach to the ideas and experiences of
the past. As Ariel came from pupil to associate to
full collaborator, she contributed her special
understanding and ideals. Both were widely and deeply
read, ingenious and persuasive synthesizers. But for
each and in their collaboration, bookish research was
not enough. They validated their judgments and
portraits of historical personages against their own
experiences in the turbulent world of the first half
of the twentieth century. Though their hours of work
were long and hard, Will never lost his interest and
social ardor. He worked for a declaration of
interdependence of religious and racial groups in
1944, an early effort at practical ecumenism,
equality and practical democracy. From their hilltop
Hollywood home, he sent letters to Presidents, kept
contact with refugee writers such as Thomas Mann and
Lion Feuchtwanger. Ariel and Will traveled,
refreshing and replenishing themselves for the later
volumes of The Story of Civilization. The
success of that massive, universal history inevitably
brought some sour and punitive responses from some
academics, resentful of the style and eloquence, the
wit and compelling narrative of the work. Will and
Ariel faced their antagonists with far more respect
and consideration than they received. But the fact is
that the criticisms were mainly misdirected. The
Durants were attacked for not doing what they
specifically said they weren’t going to do.
Their function was not original scholarship but the
synthesizing in human terms and in story form of the
vast mural of cultural and social history. In the
end, the fads of historical scientism have given way
and the arrogance of those who think they possess
history and philosophy merely because they are
specialists seem very hollow. The consensus of the
common reader became increasingly the critical
verdict. The work of the Durants comes out a long
tradition of the art of history writing and the need
to bring the pursuits and habits of philosophy to
all. To read Will Durant’s development as a
philosopher, to read Ariel’s fierce and
committed debates with him on the Renaissance and the
Reformation, to read of their love, is, for me,
thought-provoking and in the deepest sense moving.
They are my teachers as they have taught so many
others.
Robert Kirsch,
The Los Angeles Times Book Review
I am highly pleased to
join your most faithful readers and friends in all
good wishes for your many contributions to the
clarification and interpretation of the World of
History. I have been spending my odd moments, when I
have any, reading your history books, and I get a
great deal of satisfaction out of them.
Harry S.
Truman
There are certain
passages [in Will Durant’s writings] which may
well bear comparison for sheer literary power with
anything in contemporary literature.
New York
Herald Tribune
I am glad you have had the
recognition you richly deserve – best wishes for
its continuance, since it is that of great public
service and also especially so at such a reactionary
period as we’re going through.
John Dewey
Durant was a
historian, but so erudite were his observations of
the past and so astute his applications of the past
to the present that he was regarded as a major
philosopher of this century.
United Press
International
I have just finished Caesar
and Christ. What a book! It is not only the best
thing you have ever done yourself; it is the best
piece of historical synthesis ever done by an
American. I can imagine no improvement in it. It is
clearly and beautifully written, and it shows a hard
common sense in every line. I have never read any
book which left me better contented.
H.L. Mencken
There are few people
whom I have ever known for whom I have a higher
regard and a greater appreciation [than Will Durant].
I’d rather have written his book on The Story
of Philosophy than to have done anything or
everything that I ever did.
Clarence
Darrow
The greatest
historians of our time, who have lived their own
fascinating true-life "love story" since
she was his 15-year old student, Los Angeles –
recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, they have produced
11 best-selling masterworks of history in 40
years… "spanning the birth of man and
following his progress right up till the French
Revolution" …and recently completed (at
ages 90 and 77) their final classic, "The Age of
Napoleon." They were married in City Hall, he
carrying a briefcase swollen with books on philosophy
and she holding her roller skates. Their marriage
became a working literary partnership – in the
early years she was secretary, researcher, assistant
and editor – that led eventually, by volume 7 of
the "Civilization" series, to
co-authorship. They have produced a total of seven
books together, and Mr. Durant alone has written 17.
His The Story of Philosophy has been
continuously in print since it was first published in
1928 and has sold more than 3 million copies in 19
languages, according to Simon & Schuster, his
publisher.
The New York
Times, Nov. 6, 1975
I shall never forget
that aphorism of yours "To believe in nothing
and worship everything." That really was an
aphorism worthy of Chuang-tzu himself and it sank
into my mind and doubtless will suddenly leak out
like a fish when I’m lecturing somewhere. Never
to my dying day shall I forget it!
John Cowper
Powys
I was telling you all away back days ago
about my going with Charlie Chaplin to hear a debate
between Will Durant, that wrote the wonderful book, The
Story of Philosophy. He is just one of the finest
fellows you ever met. He made the same trip across
Siberia into Russia that I made. He was debating an
Englishman named Starchey. This Starchey was a
Bolshevik, but he was very fair in his talk, and it
was a brilliant thing to hear.
Will Rogers
Your prose cries to be
read out loud!
Dick Simon
(Simon and Schuster)
Our century has
produced no more stupendous event than the
Durants’ narration of the story of mankind.
Edward E.
Fitzgerald, President and chief operating officer of
the Book of the Month Club
The best education a
student of humanities could have would be to curl up
in their parent’s library with the Durant’s
famous The Story of Civilization.
John Tunney,
Former California senator
I could not but
welcome this opportunity to tell you of my
long-standing admiration for you and for the career
that has made you a household word across America.
Your interpretation of the progress of civilization
has introduced not only countless youngsters, but
many adults to the history of other times, other
peoples, and celebrated past events, and has enriched
the lives of your fellow citizens, and indeed of men
and women throughout the world, for whom your name
and that of Mrs. Durant will always symbolize an
exciting adventure into the past. And since that past
is the prologue to the future, your works have a
timeless quality and a meaning that will endure for
generations to come.
Richard M.
Nixon
Will Durant has taken
trouble in this book [The Case For India],
trouble to know. The miserable conditions of the
country he has seen with his own eyes, but, what is
rare with most tourists, he has explored the history
of our misfortune. Will Durant treated us with the
respect due to human beings. I noticed in his book a
poignant note of pain at the suffering and indignity
of the people who are not his kindred, an indignant
desire to be just to the defeated race. I know that
the author will have small chance to reward in
popularity from his readers but he, I am sure, has
his noble compensation in upholding the best
tradition of the West in its championship of freedom
and fair play.
Rabindranath
Tagore
I am absolutely
thrilled to have the book, which is wonderful for me
now and will be wonderful for the children later on.
Thank you so very much.
Laurence
Olivier
Your contributions over these
years to man's understanding of history and of
himself has given us all the perspective, the
courage, and the confidence, we and future
generations will need to face the future creatively
and constructively.
Senator Edward
M. Kennedy
You are truly one of
America's greatest. With your wonderful wife Ariel,
you make a team of which we Americans are deeply
proud.
Margaret Chase
Smith
United States Senator from Maine
I know that you and
Mrs. Durant have explored many of the struggles
between chaos and order that have occupied men since
the beginning of time. You know, as well as any man
or woman, the tangled web or rights and wrongs that
emerges from those struggles. The current torment in
our cities is no different. I am greatly strengthened
by your words…
Lyndon B.
Johnson
.
