page_title: Will Durant
section_title: The Story of Civilization
hierarchical_section_title: Will Durant / Writing career / The Story of Civilization
caption_attribution_description: English: The 11 volumes of the "Story of Civilization" by Will and Ariel Durant. A visual companion to this work is at maxergon.com. Please credit maxergon.com if using this file outside of Wikipedia.
context_page_description: William James Durant was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy, described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".
  He conceived of philosophy as total perspective or seeing things sub specie totius —a phrase inspired by Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis, roughly meaning "from the perspective of the eternal". He sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, which had grown voluminous and become fragmented into esoteric specialties, and to vitalize it for contemporary application.
  The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
context_section_description: The Durants strove throughout The Story of Civilization to create what they called "integral history." They opposed it to the "specialization" of history, an anticipatory rejection of what some have called the "cult of the expert." Their goal was to write a "biography" of a civilization, in this case, the West, including not just the usual wars, politics and biography of greatness and villainy but also the culture, art, philosophy, religion, and the rise of mass communication. Much of The Story considers the living conditions of everyday people throughout the 2500 year period that their "story" of the West covers. They also bring an unabashedly moral framework to their accounts, constantly stressing the "dominance of strong over the weak, the clever over the simple." The Story of Civilization is the most successful historiographical series in history. It has been said that the series "put Simon & Schuster on the map" as a publishing house. In the 1990s, an unabridged audiobook production of all 11 volumes was produced by Books On Tape read by Alexander Adams (Grover Gardner).
  For Rousseau and Revolution (1967), the 10th volume of The Story of Civilization, the Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature. In 1977, it was followed by one of the two highest awards granted by the United States government to civilians, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by Gerald Ford.
  The first volume of The Story of Civilization series, called Our Oriental Heritage (1935), is divided into an introduction and three books. The introduction takes the reader through the different aspects of civilization (economical, political, moral and mental). Book One is dedicated to the civilizations of the Near East (Sumeria, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Judea and Persia). Book two is "India and Her Neighbors." Book three moves deeper into the east, where the Chinese Civilization flourishes and Japan starts to find its place in the world's political map.
caption: The 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "6000", "Image ImageLength": "3368", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS M100", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2019:02:23 11:46:51", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "300", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1348", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1462", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3953", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "5000", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "5000", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:02:23 00:40:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:02:23 00:40:54", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "20", "EXIF SubSecTime": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "20", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5476", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2396", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "6000", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3368", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1292", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2000000/293", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2000000/293", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "662050000326", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[15, 45, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-M15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "00000387c9"}