THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (tm)  Ver. 4.8
About the Authors                       Durant, Will & Ariel   
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                         ABOUT THE AUTHORS                                  
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  WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5,        
1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in        
Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peter's (Jesuit) College,         
Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University, New York. For a           
summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907,        
but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament, he settled          
down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach              
Latin, French, English, and geometry (1907-11). He entered the              
seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he         
has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet             
seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (1911-13)      
the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in                   
libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation           
and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook      
to broaden his borders.                                                     
  Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his           
pupils- who had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898-            
resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he            
took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology          
under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Woodbridge and Dewey.      
He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy      
at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church      
in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and            
philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years,                
provided the initial material for his later works.                          
  The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him      
to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some               
incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working         
hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To            
better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around           
the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and          
Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria,        
Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for      
Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of            
Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume          
2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ               
(1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe        
provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951         
Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of               
gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further         
studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new      
vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).                                
  Mrs. Durant's share in the preparation of these volumes became            
more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of              
Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that             
Justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so          
it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and      
Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).             
  The publication of Volume 11, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded      
five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at      
the age of 83; Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96.      
Their last published work was A Dual Autobiograpby (1977).                  
                                                                            
                                                                            
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