In any given essay or text, readers are treated to lectures in philosophy, religion, economics, science, and the arts. Their writing not only outlines the history of past events but also attempts to understand their manifold causes and consequences. Though the Durants are typically referred to as historians, they were in fact much more than that. Along the way, they came closer to writing an unbiased history of civilization than any academic before or after. During a time when people’s impression of reality was heavily influenced by social, political, and economic movements like capitalism, fascism, and communism, Will and Ariel attempted to survey history in its totality. The Durants were, for the most part, fiercely independent thinkers. with nothing but the clothes on her back. This interest in writing for the “common man” as opposed to other scholars stemmed from their upbringing: Will grew up in a large family of French-Canadian Catholics whose patriarch was an illiterate factory worker Ariel was born in a Jewish ghetto in the Ukraine and arrived in the U.S.
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