The Story of Philosophy

I really enjoyed this book. It's insightful as well as informative, and Durant's prose is flowing and easy-to-read, with occasional flights of poetic style.

He covers the following philosophers in detail:
1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. Bacon
4. Spinoza
5. Voltaire
6. Kant
7. Schopenhauer
8. Spencer
9. Nietzsche

There were some omissions / thinkers I wish he'd written more about:
- Classical philosophy after Aristotle (the Stoics and Epicureans)
- the Catholic philosophers (Augustine, Gregory, Aquinas)
- the early ‘natural philosophers' (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton)
- Descartes
- Locke
- Bentham and Mill
- Marx

Of course, there's an advantage in keeping a book to a reasonable size (this one was actually not too heavy or thick and quite comfortable to read, as opposed to the monstrosity that is Bertrand Russell's doorstopper!)

The title is accurate, because it reads more like a story than a textbook. It's more than a series of biographical sketches of the major philosophers, though. Durant traces the history of thought, trying to tease out the zeitgeist of each era. I especially liked the way he introduced the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece in the context of what was happening at the time. He offers some clever answers to questions such as, “Why Greece?” and “Why then?”

At the end of each chapter, Durant offers us 2-3 pages of “Criticism” where he responds to the philosophical ideas he has just outlined. These were among the highlights of the book for me. In every book such as this, the author must avoid two opposing extremes: a purely factual, dry and passionless account of things on the one hand, and an overly opinionated, biased, emotional commentry on the other. I think Durant has found a good middle way here.

Hope this review was helpful to somebody. If you've read this far, and you like this kind of book, I think you should get it - you'll almost certainly enjoy it.