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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I loved reading this book. 2500 years in very broad and bright brush strokes. People, places, events, ideas forming the tapestry mostly of Western civilization. Each image merging with the previous and the next. History and story are not too rigorously distinguished. The book is not footnoted, but the Heroes of History are made to present their coloring of their time and make known our indebtedness to them. Plus the joy of well crafted phrasing placed here and there throughout. A very nice finale Mr Durant. no reviews | add a review
History.
Nonfiction.
HTML: At Will Durant's death in 1981, his personal papers were dispersed among relatives, collectors, and archive houses. Twenty years later, scholar John Little discovered the previously unknown manuscript of Heroes of History in Durant's granddaughter's garage. Written shortly before he died, these twenty-one essays serve as an abbreviated version of Durant's bestselling, eleven-volume series, The Story of Civilization. Durant traces the lives and ideas of those who have helped to define civilization, from Confucius to Shakespeare, from the Roman Empire to the Reformation, spanning thousands of years of human history. A volume of life-enhancing wit and wisdom, Heroes of History draws upon Durant's expansive knowledge and singular ability to translate distant events and complex ideas into easily accessible principles. .No library descriptions found. |
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Let me just provide a brief quote from the book (page 125 on the Roman Revolution of 133 B.C.) that describes one such repeating motif.
...in every civilization and in almost every generation, the natural inequality of economic ability, and the popular institution of inheritance, had produced an increasing concentration of wealth... Periodically such concentration is challenged by social unrest, sometimes by revolution.
Sound familiar? This kind of situation has arisen time and again since the dawn of recorded history. Sadly, we still haven't discovered a way to prevent it. ( )