Will Durant

William James Durant was an American historian, philosopher, and writer best known for The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume narrative history of Eastern and Western civilizations co-authored with his wife Ariel Durant. The series, published between 1935 and 1975, made scholarly history accessible to general readers and became one of the most widely read historical works of the twentieth century.

He was born on November 5, 1885, in North Adams, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian Catholic parents Joseph Durant and Mary Allard. The family later moved to Kearny, New Jersey, where he attended St. Peter's Preparatory School and St. Peter's College in Jersey City. He briefly trained for the Catholic priesthood before leaving the seminary, and he later earned a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1917.

His breakthrough came with The Story of Philosophy in 1926, a popular survey of Western thinkers from Plato to John Dewey. The book sold millions of copies, demonstrated a public appetite for serious nonfiction, and gave him the financial freedom to devote himself to the longer civilization project he had begun envisioning.

Together with Ariel, he produced volume after volume across four decades, sharing the National Book Award in 1968 for Rousseau and Revolution and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. He died on November 7, 1981, in Los Angeles, just thirteen days after Ariel.

The name Will is an English diminutive of William, derived from the Germanic elements wil meaning will or desire and helm meaning helmet or protection. He carried the name with the dignity of a thinker devoted to the long arc of human knowledge.