You Know Their
Writings. Now Meet Them Personally.
“They
had no armies. They ruled no people. They received no government
subsidies for their efforts. And yet 'if knowledge is power,'
as the popular adage states, then Will and Ariel Durant were
perhaps the two most powerful people to ever walk our planet.”
--- John Little (Director, Will Durant Foundation)
You are cordially invited
into the home of Will and Ariel Durant at the very peak and climax
of their brilliant careers, to share with them an hour of uninterrupted
revelry, as they recount – in their own words -- the story
of their lives, the story behind the creation and publication
of their greatest books (including The Story of Philosophy and
their Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, The Story of Civilization),
in addition to their formula for 54-years of happy marriage and
their individual philosophies of life.
Through unprecedented access
to rare archive materials from the Durant’s estate, award-winning
filmmaker John Little (Bruce Lee: In His Own Words) has
fashioned a platform that allows the Durants to tell their own
story. The viewer will come to know the Durants personally, and
learn firsthand of the lessons that they learned from their over
half century of scholarship in the world of human affairs. For
history, as the Durants teach it, is not a dreary succession
of dates and reigns, but about people, and how they interact
and what they learn from each other and, most importantly, how
the experiences of the great people of the past can help us deal
more effectively with the problems of the present.
This rare opportunity
to “visit” with the Durants marks the first ever official
video of their story – and what a story it is! During this
brilliant one-hour presentation you will learn:
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Of their marriage when
Will was 28 – and
Ariel but 15!
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Of Will’s painful
decision to leave the seminary, and the religion of his
family.
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Of his embrace of history as his personal
philosophy.
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Of Ariel’s decision – at age 14 – to
leave the public school system of New York.
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Of Ariel’s self-imposed incarceration
in the “insane ward” of Bellevue Mental Hospital – and
of Will’s coming to rescue her.
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How the accidental publication
of one of Durant’s public lectures grew into The Story of Philosophy,
and became a runaway bestseller -- and their ticket out of
poverty and into a world of scholarship.
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Of the work (half a century!) required to
create The Story of Civilization – a survey of
over 110 centuries of human history, and their pioneering presentation
of history “in the round;” featuring all the varied
and integrated threads that together form the very tapestry
of human existence as it is really lived and played out on
the stage of life.
-
Of the most vital “lessons” that
their 50-years of scholarship revealed about such topics as “the
generation gap,” “war,” “the nature of
man,” “religion,” “the power of ideas,” and “the
most influential personality of the 20th century.”
-
Of the great achievements
of human history are our “heritage;” i.e., the
birthright of every man, woman and child who is willing to
accept it.
A Visit With Will And
Ariel Durant is your personal passkey to get to know and
befriend two highly civilized and kindly souls in a way that
formal writings can never approximate. The Durant’s union
would last 68 years – until their deaths, a mere two weeks
apart, in 1981. In that time together, they traveled the world
three times over, and came to possess an almost encyclopedic
knowledge of the arts, sciences, philosophies and traditions
of hundreds of cultures; they spoke ill of no creed or race;
viewing the record of our struggle for survival over the centuries
from a vantage point of “total perspective.” Their
emphasis was always upon the record of mankind’s creative
achievements; the triumphs of civilization rather than its
tragedies; the positive and the inspirational, rather than
the base and negative, of human experience.
“Made pessimistic by the wars and
politics that filled with sound and fury the pages of most
historians, I found that I could recapture my sense of the
worth and beauty of life by turning from the dramatic spectacles
of military and political conflict to contemplate on the one
hand the humane and peaceful life of the people, and on the
other the contributions of exceptional men and women to the
civilization and culture of their nation and the race. I determined
to devote my life to recording the creative, rather than the
destructive, things that men had done.”
-- Will Durant
Surrounded by the memorabilia
of their life-long collaboration, A Visit With Will And Ariel
Durant is a compelling and highly educational film, providing
the Durants with a forum once again in which to reflect on the
reasons that impelled them to write such history, and the value
of the kind of history for which they are so justifiably renowned.
To view a minute-long
preview of A VISIT WITH WILL AND ARIEL DURANT,
click here.
To order a copy of A VISIT WITH
WILL AND ARIEL DURANT, click here.
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