The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time: Complete by Will Durant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Great Mind Will Durant is speaking to my fantasy with his great description of a dream library:
“If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a rosary. I would have my library spacious and dark and cool, safe from alien sights and sounds, with slender casements opening on quiet fields, voluptuous chairs inviting communion and reverie, shaded lamps illuminating sanctuaries here and there, and every inch of the walls concealed with the mental heritage of our race. And there at any hour my hand or spirit would welcome my friends, if their souls were hungry and their hands were clean.”
(The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, p. 64)
I read, partly, to someday be able to speak, or if alone, think like Durant writes: broadly scoped over the breadth of human accomplishment and err, he retains an entertaining wit, fascination, and hope.
While this is a short work, it's breezy delivery of a hundred books to read, a dozen dates to remember, the most important minds, and more beies the scholarship and erudition of the content.
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