Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsNever read this book with a highlighter in hand!
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2015
This delightful book sums up a lifetime of work by a very wise man who adroitly studied and recorded the follies, faults, faiths and fantasies of many civilizations.
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.