About this item
Praised as a revelatory book by The Wall Street Journal, this is the last and most personal work of Pulitzer Prizewinning author and historian Will Durant, discovered thirty-two years after his death. The culmination of Will Durants sixty-plus years spent researching the philosophies, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations from across the world, Fallen Leaves is the distilled wisdom of one of the worlds greatest minds, a man with a renowned talent for rendering the insights of the past accessible. Over the course of Durants career he received numerous letters from curious readers who have challenged me to speak my mind on the timeless questions of human life and fate. With Fallen Leaves, his final book, he at last accepted their challenge. In twenty-two short chapters, Durant addresses everything from youth and old age to religion, morals, sex, war, politics, and art.
About the Author
William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975. He conceived of philosophy as total perspective, or, seeing things "sub specie totius," a phrase inspired by Spinoza's "sub specie aeternitatis." He sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, which had grown too voluminous and become fragmented into esoteric specialties, and to vitalize it for contemporary application. Durant was a gifted prose stylist and storyteller who won a large readership in great part because of the nature and excellence of his writing, which, in contrast to formal academic language, is lively, witty, charismatic, colourful, ornate, epigrammatic, in short, "humanized."
