This is a very enjoyable book by Will & Ariel Durant who gave us a wonderful account of their fascinating lives together. In many respects, Will Durant was not only a great historian and philosopher, but also a great and gentle man who was fortunate to have the love and support of his outstanding wife, family, and a huge supporting cast of friends and colleagues.

You'll learn about meetings with Einstein, debates with Clarence Darrow and Bertrand Russell, dinners with Charlie Chaplin and Will Rogers. From turn of the century New York and Greenwich Village, through both world wars, the Depression, you name it. These people lived through it and participated fully. The book is worth it just for the oppurtunity to see the world unfold through the eyes of a man who lived from 1885 to 1981.

One thing that also impressed me throughout this book was the Durant's unwavering honesty about their evolving lifestyles, viewpoints, and beliefs over the course of their lives. They were among those rare people who fully understood where they were they were headed and never forgot where they'd been. They had the courage to face their own inconsistencies and doubts, and did it with style and grace as the decades, with all their incredible changes, flowed by. These were tireless people who loved life and humanity, and watched as humanity went from wagons to the moon.

This book overflows with stellar intellect, endearing humility, and a couple's incredible love for each other during a marriage that lasted for 69 years. An awesome dual autobiography!

A real pleasure to read. This is the book which can open new vistas for any reader and is written in Mr.Durrants inimitable style. Only if philosophy could be made as pleasurable as this!The chapter on how he & Ariel raised their daughter can be an ideal marriage gift for newly weds.

It is an excellent history reference, although people may not read it from page one to the end like reading a fiction. College students may use it for academic reference and research papers.

However, if you are into Roman historical novels such as Colleen McCullough "First Man in Rome", "Grass Crown"..., Gore Vidal "Julian", Robert Graves "I, Claudius"..., Henryk K. Sienkiewicz "Quo Vadis"; Roman era fantasies such as Pauline Gedge "The Eagle and the Raven", Donna Gillespie "The Light Bearer", it definitely adds complimentary flavor to your reading by being aware of the political and social environment of Roman Empire. The chapters are not essentially in chronological layout, but, for example, a chapter devoted to Roman arts and letters, another for daily lives of the social classes. Whilst you are reading your novel in the middle and want to find out more about a particular topic, simply refer to the Index and the relevant chapters.

You would enjoy the novels, and possibly Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra", and the movies "Ben-Hur", "Spartacus", "The Fall of Roman Empire", "Gladiator" even more. And "Cleopatra" and "Quo Vadis" were made movies too.

The part of Early Christianity in the latter chapters, would help you in reading the Gospels, the Acts, and letters from Paul and the disciples. In the same manner, it helps you to appreciate more in reading Christian historical fictions such as Sholem Asch "The Nazarene" "The Apostle", Thomas Costain "The Silver Chalice".

An additional recommendation is Vol 4. "Age of Faith", sole focus of which is the discussion of the religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam in the Middle Ages.

It's too bad so few people have taken the trouble to read or even review Durant. "The Story of Philosophy" was a best-seller in 1929. Tom Clancy & Patricia Cornwell (sic) get listings as long as the day is long, but Durant just gets in left in the corner ignored. It's a shame.

This book is excelent ancient rome history book.It is impossible to be not impress.

Will and Ariel Durant wrote a massive eleven-volume history, The Story of Civilization. After they finished volume ten -- which was to be the last - they came out with this brief work. (In 1975 they produced the final volume in the series, The Age of Napoleon). Although this series is not considered by professional historians to be a great work of history, the Durants' love of history is evident on every page. I read most of them in high school and college, and they help inspire a life-long interest history.

The Lessons of History consists of a number of short chapters, in which the Durants summarize what their study of history revealed on various themes, such as war, morals, government, religion, etc. Although certainly not a profound work, it contains a number of insights. For example, the discussion of the lineage of communism is quite interesting. On the other hand, the Durants strike me as having been moderately left of center, and some of their arguments in favor of government regulation of the economy don't convince me. They appear somewhat more conservative on morals, and there is a good discussion on how war negatively impacts traditional morality. The discussion of religion is somewhat ambiguous, perhaps reflecting Will Durant, who studied for the priesthood, became an atheist, and died an agnostic.

This work came out in 1968, and the Durants make a couple of predictions which didn't exactly come true. They argue that by 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be politically dominant in the US. In addition, they expressed the commonplace idea in the 60s that the Soviet Union and the United States were coming closer together and would eventually meet in the middle.

Will and Ariel Durant were to history what Carl Sagan was to science: They breathed life into a subject considered lifeless by too many, and clothed the skeleton of recorded history in a garment rich in colorful detail and vast in perspective. "Lessons Of History" is, in my opinion, the finest 100 page non-fiction book ever written, and represents the capstone and encapsulating work of two authors who gave the world their ten thousand page "Story Of Civilization" over a period of 50 years.

Within this delightful book, one can view the enormous panorama of human civilization as it developed from, and was formed by, the matrices of geography, religion, science, war, and a host of other factors. The Durant's, in a writing style that should have been copyrighted, provide the reader with an engaging view of humanity that few readers will come away from without being touched and awed. To be sure, the Durant's works have had a few (very few) detractors, but they were almost entirely high-browed academics in narrow research areas who most likely envied them their commercial success. If I could give this synopsis of 100 centuries of history more than 5 stars I'd do it in a nanosecond.

For the person in a hurry, but who is also curious about history, I would recommend this book. It is the culmination of a survey of history that Will and Ariel Durrant did in the 1960's. I realize that some of the conclusions have been dated, such as concern about the Soviet Union, but that does not destroy the value of the work. Indeed, who is to say that the Soviet Union, or some neo-Tsarist regime, could not rise again?

Moreover, this book covers other topics, all of them revolving around the "Human Predicament," which is basically a choice between freedom and security. Or better yet, actual freedom, and claimed security, since if you chose security over freedom, you will lose both freedom and security.

This book is an easy read, written on the high-school level, so there are no excuses for not understanding anything. It is an essential in anyone's collection of "Great Books," since not only is the unexamined life not worth living, the unexamined civilization is not worth preserving. And we can make a change in things.

I heard about Will Durant, and his Story of Civilisation, from general meandering through the reviews on Amazon. It is to the shame of the UK, where I live, that he is virtually unknown here and his works unobtainable.

I bought this book via one of the used book suppliers on Amazon and the mystery of Durants' obscurity in England has only deepened. Here clearly is one of the major historical writers of the last century, possessing a skill of verbiage and phrase the equal of Churchills.

The Life of Greece is well named. You trul;y are lead by the hand into that long ago civilisation. You are shown its cities, its institutions, its armies, its arts, its gods, its hopes, its fears, all to a background cacophony of slaves chisels clinking in the silver mines at Laurinium, or the howls of outrage from the crowds in the theatre over Euripides' savage potrayal of the Gods' caprice and cruelty. You really feel that you begin to understand the ancients, and to a degree see through their eyes.

The book is very much for the general reader with a thirst for knowledge. One immediately feels upon finishing the book that further readings will be required, and enjoyed, because the is such a depth of detail in the book that it would be impossible to absorb more than a fraction of what is there.

A further reading will have to wait however. My copy of Caesar and Christ has just arrived - and I'm off to ancient Rome for a while.

This is one of those "important" books that I had been intending to read for more years than I want to admit. I truly regret not picking this up sooner (or any of the Durant's other works) as it reads almost like a novel, though it is also very scholarly as can be seen from the copious notes and bibliographic sources contained therein. Durant's observations about the personalities and their actions are often touching and sympathetic, but he doesn't shy away from stern criticism of the social weaknesses and short-sighted treacheries that finally destroyed the Greeks. As a society, these people had faults that were all too human, yet they had a creativity and vitality that Durant is able to bring to life with a startling immediacy. He manages to peel away the interveaning millenia between then and now and reveal the Greeks not as "ancients", but as our virtual contemporaries. Read this book and understand why Greece is the fountainhead of the West.

Will Durant is a prolific writer and historian. This book is a must for students or anyone studying Hellenic history. Durant's books will stand the test of time - his uniquely orthodox perspective and the keen insights offered in his books are a welcomed break from the revisionist history of today.

For students of political science and history, studying ancient Greece offers insightful lessons of history in relation to politics and government. Greek history is full of political turmoil and change. The Greco-Roman contribution that shaped the ideas of the founding fathers of the American Republic were in part based on the lessons of Greek history. History, Greek history especially, offers keen insight on why the American founders were weary of unchecked democracy and the absence of a rule of law.

William Durant is just a pedant who cannot appreciate a hero's greatness. Don't buy or read his books unless you are a useless pedantic fool like him with no hot blood in your vein.

Generally, the series of books written by Will and Ariel Durant is an enormous project, which the authors produced in a workman-like manner. Yes, they are pedants, and the works have a kind of lets-hurry-along flavor; a lets-get-it-all-in aura.

The Durants are Anglophiles, and it shows here. Too much Wellington, and too many British viewpoints, which were in the 19th Century and are to this day stacked against Napoleon, in particular, and the French, in general.

Reading this book, one gets the feeling, that the authors can hardly wait to get to the part about the Battle of Waterloo.

Anyone interested in Napoleon -- the man, and his works -- can find more comprehensive studies by other authors.

The Durant's writing style can sometimes be confusing to the uninitiated. They tend to string long sentences together with semicolins; using pronouns to the point of confusion for the reader.

There is a lot of information here, but this is not a great book. It is a very broad, shallow history giving only a mild flavor, not a real taste of the "Frenchness" of the Age of Napoleon. Francophiles and fans of the Emperor should look elsewhere.

Yes, this book presents an Anglo perspective of Napoleon and his time in Europe. Still, the work of the Durans is fantastic as it captures historical elements from sources as diverse as visual arts, philosophy, literature as well as the customs of the time. The work is also rich in research and references, presenting numerous scripts from Napoleon himself and his subordinates.

After reading this book, I was encouraged to buy the whole collection the Durans produced and I am very happy to have done so.