What Two of the Greatest History Writers Can Teach Us About Humanity
People aren’t terrible, history just records it that way
“One day in 1912, as he lay ill with dysentery in Damascus, 27-year old Will Durant conceived ‘The Story of Civilization.’ He did not get around to starting it until 1927, but when it was completed in 1975, it packaged more than 110 centuries of human history in 11 volumes.”
— NY Times Obituary, by United Press International
Pulitzer Prize winners Will Durant and his wife Ariel invested about fifty years in writing their epic history collection called “The Story of Civilization”. As you can imagine, this much time invested in studying civilizations can give you keen insights into humanity. The couple decided to share these insights in an even more complicated project.
They would summarize 110 centuries of human history into about 100 pages in a book called “The Lessons of History”. I know what you’re thinking — impossible. A history of that magnitude can’t be broken down into a book that small. Well, the Durants agreed and said, “Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.”
Whether 100 pages is enough or not. They managed to compress incredible lessons learned…
