$0.00$0.00
- Click above to get a preview of our newest plan - unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
- You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
- $7.95$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
-12% $11.57$11.57
Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War & God Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
The final and most personal work from Pulitzer Prize - winning author and historian Will Durant - discovered 32 years after his death - is a message of insight for everyone who has sought meaning in life or the council of a wise friend in navigating life's journey.
From 1968 to 1978, Will Durant made four public allusions to the existence of Fallen Leaves. One, in 1975, hinted at its contents: "a not very serious book that answers the questions of what I think about government, life, death, and God." And in 1975: "I propose... to answer all the important questions, simply, fairly, and imperfectly." Even into his 90s,he worked on the book daily, writing it out on legal notepads. Upon his death in 1981, no one, not even the Durant heirs, knew if he had completed it, or even if it still existed. Thirty-two years later, in a granddaughter's attic trunk, the manuscript was discovered.
Fallen Leaves is Will Durant's most personal book. It is precisely as he described: 22 short chapters on everything from youth and old age, religion and morals, to sex, war, politics, and art. The culmination of Durant's 60-plus years spent researching the philosophies, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations from across the world, Fallen Leaves is the distilled wisdom of a gifted scholar with a renowned talent for rendering the insights of the past accessible. In its preface Durant mentions that over the course of his career, he received letters from "curious readers who have challenged me to speak my mind on the timelessquestions of human life and fate." With Fallen Leaves, he accepted their challenge. It contains strong opinions, elegant prose, and deep insights into the human condition as only Will Durant could provide, as well as his revealing conclusions about the perennial problems and greatest joys we face as a species.
- Listening Length5 hours and 18 minutes
- Audible release dateDecember 9, 2014
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB00QL3FBLI
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
Read & Listen
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $7.49 after you buy the Kindle book.
People who viewed this also viewed
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
People who bought this also bought
- Audible Audiobook
- Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and CompaniesAudible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Related to this topic
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Product details
Listening Length | 5 hours and 18 minutes |
---|---|
Author | Will Durant |
Narrator | Grover Gardner |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com Release Date | December 09, 2014 |
Publisher | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B00QL3FBLI |
Best Sellers Rank | #230,898 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #118 in Modern Philosophy (Audible Books & Originals) #482 in Literary Essays #482 in Historical Essays (Books) |
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book very interesting and good quality. They also appreciate the author's powerful prose and intellect for readers who love history.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book very interesting, brilliant, and fresh in spirit and observation. They also say it provides incredible overviews of difficult subject matter.
"...In that it is a gem, a book never to be read with a highlighter in hand - - for if so, almost every page will shine with lines of bright colours..." Read more
"...A little daunting in places, but still a good read. --- The keeper passage in this book: It is a mistake to think that the past is dead...." Read more
"...And they are both fresh in spirit and observation...." Read more
"Sometimes brilliant, sometimes too formal. A few chapters without relevance. Saving “The Insights of History” for last...." Read more
Customers find the writing style powerful, lucid, and unrivaled. They also say the book is divinely inspired and packed with quotable wisdom.
"...Several: the writing is elegant, clear and concise. It is packed with quotable wisdom based on his observations, summaries and ideas which..." Read more
"My gut reaction is that this book is divinely inspired from the source of all wisdom. May I recommend Cicero's On Old Age as a companion volume?..." Read more
"...Every sentence is loaded with wisdom...." Read more
"This is beautifully written book from whom I believe is one of the greatest historians of all time...." Read more
Customers find the book short, sparse, and deep. They also say some parts of the book are dated.
"...It is a short book - less than 200 pages. On the other hand, it is almost encyclopedic in its treatment of subjects...." Read more
"Much of the book was deep and enjoyable some of the book was dated but I'm glad I read it." Read more
"I’ve always appreciated Will Durant’s writing and this is a small book with his musings and comments on quite a few things." Read more
"Very poetic and beautifully written. It's a sparse book and while some of the morals might espoused seemed old-fashioned, that's not to say they're..." Read more
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Three conclusions are obvious: (1) history reflects the era in which it was written, and thus is never objective; and (2) no one has the wisdom or insight to predict the future; and (3) you will be amazed at the progress we've made since the 1970s.
That said, it is easier to predict the future than to be sure about the past. The future deals with hopes and fears, the past is filled with debates, insults and rebuttals. Some writers comfort or scare people about the future, which generally sets minds at ease by promising readers that their lives have meaning. Others recall old stories, which often sets everyone's mind at unease by explaining how the past could have been better.
In essence, this book boldly asserts, "I have studied the past, now here's what you must do for the future."
Good luck. Those willing to abandon individuality for any moral certainty are already Jesuits or slaves. Durant offers eugenics as a hope for the future and at least a semi-nativist answer to "unsuitable" immigration.
He doesn't seem to understand that today's marvelous world was created by people, flawed as they were in his judgment, who made good choices in response to irrational and unpredictable events. Somehow, despite the pessimism of the wise, slowly but surely, people and society improves.
So what are the benefits of this almost half-a-century old review? Several: the writing is elegant, clear and concise. It is packed with quotable wisdom based on his observations, summaries and ideas which created his wisdom.
In that it is a gem, a book never to be read with a highlighter in hand - - for if so, almost every page will shine with lines of bright colours to emphasize ideas to remember, massage and modify as times change. It's how Durant wrote this book, a decade or more to collect and create a concise summary of the best of his decades of scholarship.
The book expresses the long lifetime of ideas of a wise man. Good readers will use his observations to nake sense of events as they happen; great readers will stand on the shoulders of his wisdom for insight into the future.
Therefore I feel that we of this generation give too much time to news about the transient present, too little to the living past. We are choked with news, and starved of history. We know a thousand items about the day or yesterday, we learn the events and troubles and heartbreaks of a hundred peoples, the policies and pretensions of a dozen capitals, victories and defeats of causes, armies, and athletic teams --- but how, without history, can we understand the events, discriminate their significance, sift out the large from the small, see the basic currents underlying surface movements and changes, and foresee the result sufficiently to guard against fatal error or the souring of unreasonable hopes?
"History," said Lord Bolingbroke, quoting Thucydides, "is philosophy teaching by example." And so it is. It is the laboratory, using the world for its workshop, man for material, and records for its experience. A wise man can learn from other men's experience; a fool cannot learn even from his own. History is other men's experience, in countless number through many centuries. By adding some particles of that moving picture to our vision we may multiply our lives and double our understanding.
Top reviews from other countries
“In our days…”
“In my days it used to be better…”
These are some of the utterances through which the elderly people alienate themselves from the others and start appearing like a bore. Nope, I am not talking against their privilege to that common nostalgia. It is how they start harping on about how things were different and better in ‘their days’ that drives people away. But not every old person becomes a bore though. Some of them, through their immense experience and wisdom, gathered through the many long decades, help the younger people get a better perspective on the things around. Like Mr. Durant, who speaks to us through this book, from behind the veils of Death.
In his long life of 96 years, Mr. Durant had seen more than the most of us can even imagine. To put his life span in perspective, he was born on the same year when Louis Pasteur found the first vaccine and breathed his last in 1981, when NASA’s Space Shuttle took its first orbital flight. In this period, he had seen empires peak in glory and plummet to pieces, revolutions in Russia, the reshaping of Europe, two World Wars, man’s glorious landing on the Moon, eradication of smallpox, advent of digital era and so much more. Let that sink in!!!
Not just his age, Mr. Durant was a brilliant and prolific writer too. His books on history and philosophy have become some of the essential works in their respective fields. So, when a man like William James Durant leaves some unpublished manuscripts for posterity to benefit, I couldn’t let go of the opportunity to grab that book.
This book is a gem. It is not philosophy or a chronological listing of events. This is Mr. Durant letting us know his very personal opinions about various aspects of human life – from love to life, from war to democracy, from education to religion. He has delved into all the aspects of human life, from birth to death and all other things in between. Page upon page, one could feel the yearnings of a grand old man who had seen the past and who hopes for a better, improved future, without ever sounding ‘in our days things used to be better…’!
Time flies but Truth stays. All our lives, fancies, dreams, hopes, pains, desires, wars, religions, reasons, ramblings, glorious achievements, crippling pains, fantasies are all but transient, swirling eddies that forever rise and fall in the cosmic deluge. But there are certain truths that stay ever relevant, from the first human to the day of his/her final descendant. Mr. Durant has tried to recall such truths in this book. He was one who had known that history repeats itself, sometimes even after we learn from it. He was also aware that some Truths remain untouched even amidst that flux. This book is his recounting of such truths, so that we, the lesser mortals may learn and benefit from it.
In his words “in the train of life it is the old who yield their seats to the young”. The grand old man, which such a beautiful understanding of the cycle of Life, has left behind this work of wisdom by ruminating on the past, gleaning all the timeless principles of life and putting them on paper. If you are a history / philosophy aficionado, who isn’t averse to listening to and learning from the old people, this book is for you!
Reviewed in India on December 17, 2020
“In our days…”
“In my days it used to be better…”
These are some of the utterances through which the elderly people alienate themselves from the others and start appearing like a bore. Nope, I am not talking against their privilege to that common nostalgia. It is how they start harping on about how things were different and better in ‘their days’ that drives people away. But not every old person becomes a bore though. Some of them, through their immense experience and wisdom, gathered through the many long decades, help the younger people get a better perspective on the things around. Like Mr. Durant, who speaks to us through this book, from behind the veils of Death.
In his long life of 96 years, Mr. Durant had seen more than the most of us can even imagine. To put his life span in perspective, he was born on the same year when Louis Pasteur found the first vaccine and breathed his last in 1981, when NASA’s Space Shuttle took its first orbital flight. In this period, he had seen empires peak in glory and plummet to pieces, revolutions in Russia, the reshaping of Europe, two World Wars, man’s glorious landing on the Moon, eradication of smallpox, advent of digital era and so much more. Let that sink in!!!
Not just his age, Mr. Durant was a brilliant and prolific writer too. His books on history and philosophy have become some of the essential works in their respective fields. So, when a man like William James Durant leaves some unpublished manuscripts for posterity to benefit, I couldn’t let go of the opportunity to grab that book.
This book is a gem. It is not philosophy or a chronological listing of events. This is Mr. Durant letting us know his very personal opinions about various aspects of human life – from love to life, from war to democracy, from education to religion. He has delved into all the aspects of human life, from birth to death and all other things in between. Page upon page, one could feel the yearnings of a grand old man who had seen the past and who hopes for a better, improved future, without ever sounding ‘in our days things used to be better…’!
Time flies but Truth stays. All our lives, fancies, dreams, hopes, pains, desires, wars, religions, reasons, ramblings, glorious achievements, crippling pains, fantasies are all but transient, swirling eddies that forever rise and fall in the cosmic deluge. But there are certain truths that stay ever relevant, from the first human to the day of his/her final descendant. Mr. Durant has tried to recall such truths in this book. He was one who had known that history repeats itself, sometimes even after we learn from it. He was also aware that some Truths remain untouched even amidst that flux. This book is his recounting of such truths, so that we, the lesser mortals may learn and benefit from it.
In his words “in the train of life it is the old who yield their seats to the young”. The grand old man, which such a beautiful understanding of the cycle of Life, has left behind this work of wisdom by ruminating on the past, gleaning all the timeless principles of life and putting them on paper. If you are a history / philosophy aficionado, who isn’t averse to listening to and learning from the old people, this book is for you!