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Summary: What Does History teach us?
Review: The Durant's show us that of all we might learn from History;the one thing it can't do is to help us predict the future.Even the Durant's were tempted to try in 1968 to predict the impact that lower birth rates would have in the US {see pg 23} totally missed the mark.They also had no insight into the collapse of Communism especially the speed.I do not fault them on this .Maybe they made these points to show how futile prediction really is despite an in depth knowledge of History.I think their line "There is no certainty that the future will repeat th past.Every year is an adventure" {pg 88}.
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Summary: A Profound insight into the nature of man.
Review: This book was assigned reading for an MBA program I took in 1983.For the first time I was presented with the ideas that described how we fit in the universe along with why we behave as we do.I was in my late 30's , an engineer by trade.I knew the historical behavior patterns of our numerous societies over the spectrum of recorded history, yet had failed to reduce these observations to a lowest common denominator.Will and Ariel Durant segment our history and nature into basic, simple to read chapters, that explain in simple terms how societies have strived to achieve the Utopias we all dream of. I was stunned at how history repeats itself and humbled at the fact that "the foibles of mans dreams" are the same today as they were a thousand years ago. If your ego has convinced you that solutions to the challenges of society are within the grasp of our lives today,don't read this book! On the other hand,if you are prepared to recognize that our species is nothing more than 4000 years of recorded history compared with 14,000,000 years of evolutionary development,sit back and enjoy! This is not a book for individuals who have "new PC ideas as to the nature of mankind".They will find that their ideas are same-o,same-o. Will and Ariel summerize a huge work in one volume that can be read in a day.
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Summary: I still refer to this book 30 years after first reading it.
Review: Will and Ariel Durant tried to bring Philosophy and an understanding of History to the common man and woman. They succeeded admirably, and some thirty years after reading this book I still turn to it in order to understand events occurring around me. This is no scholarly tome, but an invaluable manual for those seeking a better understanding of the world around us. It should be compulsory reading for all those aspiring to public office.
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Summary: The best of the best..
Review: Will and Ariel Durant were to history what Carl Sagan was to science: They breathed life into a subject considered lifeless by too many, and clothed the skeleton of recorded history in a garment rich in colorful detail and vast in perspective. "Lessons Of History" is, in my opinion, the finest 100 page non-fiction book ever written, and represents the capstone and encapsulating work of two authors who gave the world their ten thousand page "Story Of Civilization" over a period of 50 years. Within this delightful book, one can view the enormous panorama of human civilization as it developed from, and was formed by, the matrices of geography, religion, science, war, and a host of other factors. The Durant's, in a writing style that should have been copyrighted, provide the reader with an engaging view of humanity that few readers will come away from without being touched and awed. To be sure, the Durant's works have had a few (very few) detractors, but they were almost entirely high-browed academics in narrow research areas who most likely envied them their commercial success. If I could give this synopsis of 100 centuries of history more than 5 stars I'd do it in a nanosecond.
Rating: 
Summary: Some lessons learned
Review: Will and Ariel Durant wrote a massive eleven-volume history, The Story of Civilization. After they finished volume ten -- which was to be the last - they came out with this brief work. (In 1975 they produced the final volume in the series, The Age of Napoleon). Although this series is not considered by professional historians to be a great work of history, the Durants' love of history is evident on every page. I read most of them in high school and college, and they help inspire a life-long interest history. The Lessons of History consists of a number of short chapters, in which the Durants summarize what their study of history revealed on various themes, such as war, morals, government, religion, etc. Although certainly not a profound work, it contains a number of insights. For example, the discussion of the lineage of communism is quite interesting. On the other hand, the Durants strike me as having been moderately left of center, and some of their arguments in favor of government regulation of the economy don't convince me. They appear somewhat more conservative on morals, and there is a good discussion on how war negatively impacts traditional morality. The discussion of religion is somewhat ambiguous, perhaps reflecting Will Durant, who studied for the priesthood, became an atheist, and died an agnostic. This work came out in 1968, and the Durants make a couple of predictions which didn't exactly come true. They argue that by 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be politically dominant in the US. In addition, they expressed the commonplace idea in the 60s that the Soviet Union and the United States were coming closer together and would eventually meet in the middle.
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