The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (Hardcover)

This necessary little book presents six essays on the greatest thoughts, minds and books of all time. The reader may disagree occasiionally with his choices, though Durant compellingly argues his choices from his informed view as a recognized historian, philosopher and teacher.

The text is a snap shot of history; an opportunity to see the past and its great historical figures through the eyes of a man who made it his life mission to celebrate what it means to be human. Durant's humanism and enthusiasm is highly infectious - one comes away from his texts with a renewed hope that civilization was once great and can be great again. We have been submerged into the pessimistic, fragmented and distilled perspectives of Modernism far too long. Durant's optimism slices like Excaliber through our fashionable cynicism about the world; he is the intellectual white knight, celebrating the miracle of existence and the endless potential of humanity.

At the moment the world is filled with uncertainty and pessimism, therefore this text is highly recommended, for it might cast a glimmer of hope, and a renewed optimism about the world, the future and us.

This book is really short, so you know straight away that he wont be going into too much detail and that the book will have to be really selective about who it discusses. It was unfortunate, to me at least, that Durant had to spend so many pages justifying his selection and thus making the actual discussion of the people and ideas much shorter. Some people received only 2 pages which was a disappointment. It would have been better had Durant instead of justifying himself, written more about those people and ideas which would have justified themselves to the reader.

As he admits readily, many of the greatest poets are his favorites, so I think it would be fair to say that his choice of greatest peoples and ideas are not as objective as one might like them to be, but can such a 'top 10' or 'top 12' list ever be wholly objective?

That said, I would still recommend this book to those wanting to know what Durant thought was important to human civilization over its thousands of years of history.

The selection of book Durant gives is quite good, although personally I prefer Mortimer Adler's, which you can get from the Internet or his book "How to read a book: - Appendix A".