book1935-1975

The Story of Civilization

Disciplines:

Summary

Will and Ariel Durant's 11-volume synthetic history of world civilization — from the ancient Middle East to Napoleon — the most ambitious popular history ever written.

Core Contribution

The most comprehensive popular history of civilization in English: covering Oriental civilizations, Greece, Caesar and Christ, the age of faith, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the age of Louis XIV, the age of Voltaire, Rousseau, the French Revolution. The Durants distilled vast primary scholarship into accessible narrative without condescension. Won the Pulitzer Prize (Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution). The best accessible introduction to the intellectual history of Western civilization.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Written over 40 years — Volume 1 was published when Will Durant was 49, Volume 11 when he was 87. The sustained intellectual project across a lifetime is itself remarkable.
Ariel Durant, 30 years younger than Will, was his student before his wife. She is formally credited as co-author from Volume 8 onward, but contributed throughout — a collaboration that lasted 68 years.

Historical Influences

Gibbon Voltaire

Intellectual Lineage

Enlightenment Historiography Popular History

Allied Works

The Story of Philosophy The Lessons of History Interpretations of Life

Contemporaries & Peers

The Story of Philosophy The Lessons of History

Minds Influenced

Popular History Self-Education

Intellectual Posterity

Popular History

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