#books
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Times.
by Will Durant.
William James Durant ( November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981), American writer, historian and philosopher is best known for his eleven-volume, The Story of Civilization, which he wrote together with his wife Ariel, and published between 1935 and 1975.
His earlier work, The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, has significantly helped the popularisation of philosophy.
Will Durant is considered as one of the greatest historians that has ever lived, a Pulitzer Prize winner for literature in 1967 who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
The Greatest Minds and Ideas was published posthumously, and contain his list of greatest minds and ideas from the past.
Ten Greatest Poets:
(1) Homer, the pioneer
(2) David, the Biblical character which is referred here due to his songs and lyrics expressed in the Old Testament.
(3) Euripides, the Greek poet that was the first to tell stories as it is, without censorship or propaganda.
(4) Lucretius, a Roman poet, the greatest philosopher of Rome.
(5) Li Bo, the multi-talented Chinese poet with an incredible life story.
(6) Dante, whose poem, the Divine Comedy, is among the greatest poems ever written.
(7) William Shakespeare, for obvious reasons.
(8) John Keats, whom Durant said has left behind poems more perfect than Shakespeare.
(9) Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet with the most controversies.
(10) Walt Whitman, the American poet in the revolutionary era, whose work captured perfectly the causes of the common men.
The book is a wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time, listed in accessible and succinct form, by one of the world’s greatest scholars.
For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon – and wrote about -the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history.
Durant eloquently defends his choices of the greatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers into forming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed their surroundings and biases and enter “The Country of the Mind,” a timeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell.
From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in the human species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, stays true to Durant’s optimism.
Filled with Durant’s renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events and ideas in simple and exciting terms, this is a pocket-size liberal arts and humanist curriculum in one volume.
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