by Will and Ariel Durant, 1968, Simon and Schuster, New York

This is a wonderful 102 page book that the Durants published in 1968 after publishing their ten volume set,  The Story of Civilization beginning in 1944.  The book attempts (and succeeds very well) to summarize their findings from the ten volumes of history that they had worked on for over two decades.  I only read a bit of the ten volumes, but this single volume brings it all together.

The chapters are short but not necessarily easy to read as they delve into just about every aspect of our history.  They are generally positive about the progress of history, even though this book was written less than a quarter century after the second devastating world war of the nineteenth century.  One would think it would be difficult to remain that positive after witnessing the atrocities committed by our adversaries in World War II but they manage it well with certain caveats.

Also, the book was written prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union which helped to discredit communism as a viable economic model (although China has managed to retain a form of communism while, at the same time, modifying it to achieve economic growth).  One wonders about whether Will and Ariel would have commented any differently in their chapter on “Socialism and History”.

One of the benefits of reading this book and thinking about the implications of the long view of history is that it provided me a bit of context to what is going on in our current political cycle.  I have been amazed to see the attraction of presidential candidates who are moving to the far left as well as their level of support they seem to have. One of their observations in the book was that the more a society is democratic and individuals are given the freedom to do whatever they please, the more the concentration of wealth will accelerate.  This tendency, in turn will eventually result in a swing back to socialism as the population becomes less enamored with the situation.  This swing can sometimes be violent as it was in Europe in 1848 and in Russia in 1917.  There have been a few occasions where land reform and other redistribution programs managed to stem the movement and any resort to violence, but, sooner or later it seems, an incompetent leader manages to wreck the process and all hell breaks loose (Nero, Caligula, etc.).  These observations go a long way toward suggesting to me why so many presidential candidates are now appearing to swing so far toward socialism at the current time.

The last chapter is titled “Is Progress Real?”  Sometimes I wonder about this as it seems that some of the progress we have made as a civilized society is now slipping away.  The Durants suggest that this may be the case, but they also cite prior times in history when this occurred and it always seems that, somehow, some way, humanity bounces back and goes on to the next era of positive accomplishments.  If that is the case, maybe my grandchildren will be still able to experience a better world than the ours.