num_pages: 420
description: In this readable autobiography by the authors of The Story of Civilization, Will &amp; Ariel Durant celebrate &amp; examine a lifetime of ideas, friendships, triumphs &amp; love. The story of their life together, rich in anecdotes &amp; with the countless famous people they knew, is a passionate record of their shared experience as lovers, as spouses, as world travelers &amp; as the authors of one of the most famous successful works of scholarship in American literary history. Ariel &amp; Will met &amp; fell in love in 1912. He taught at New York's anarchist Ferrer Center, a young man already in love with the world of ideas, who had quit seminary to his family's chagrin in search of freedom. She was 14, so young that she roller-skated on her way to City Hall for her marriage, the daughter of penniless immigrants struggling to survive in the New World, inheritor of all the rebellious traditions &amp; the determination to survive of the Russian ghetto from which her family came. Together they shared not only a burning love for each other but a hunger for ideas. Their book follows their intellectual journey, beginning with their interest in anarchism (which brought them close to Emma Goldman &amp; Alexander Berkman) &amp; going on thru a long, shared lifetime that brought them honors, fame &amp; acquaintance with almost every major literary &amp; intellectual personality in Europe &amp; the USA. Their book is frank &amp; moving, at once a star-studded history of the decades thru which they lived &amp; worked &amp; an intimate tribute to an enduring love.
language: English
title: A Dual Autobiography
titlecomplete: A Dual Autobiography
genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Philosophy
ratings_count: 92
awards: awardedAt: 284025600000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Biography and Autobiography
publisher: Simon & Schuster (NYC)