Will Durant
Will Durant’s 100+ page The Greatest Minds and Ideas, as compiled by John Little, provides a marvelous layman’s summary the greatest Heroes, Thinkers, Poets, Educational Books, Peaks of Human Progress, and Dates in History. It is a delightful evening’s read, done in Durant’s lovely prose and full of interesting anecdotal data. For example, he notes that Shakespeare “wrote in haste…never erased a line or read a proof; the notion that his plays would someday be read rather than performed did not enter his head.” As with his still best-selling classic, The Story of Philosophy, he makes weighty topics and persons appealing and easy to grasp. It will entertain most and would be a fine “starter” book for youngsters.