Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

On the face of it, you might assume that this is a dry run through of lists of great thinkers, poets, and dates. However, Durant has a very inspiring way of describing the ramifications of his subjects. At first I loved how he exhaulted the accomplishments of individuals in a Randian fashion. But then I realized, as I'm sure he does as well, that the ideas attributed to these individuals are probably the product of at least a few. I think I would have rather exhaulated the ideas as the fruits of human progress. Which brings me to his next point, I liked how he measured the progress of the human race in the context of the evolutionary time-scale as well as his criteria of today's fortuned-favored folk having the knowledge, and therefore luxury, to actually mean the sentiments that humans can conceive. In short, I agree with his belief that humaninty will graduate from its current ails of war, suffering and disease. He also rubbed me the right way when he said science was key :-P Lastly, he's really good at compressing memes into short phrases.

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