Educated at St. Peter's Preparatory School, a Jesuit institution, and then Saint Peter's College in New Jersey, Durant graduated in 1907 and was purportedly to begin a career in the clergy. Instead, he took a reporter job with the New York Evening Journal. Later that year, he began teaching at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. In 1911, he became a school principal at the Ferrer Modern School and while at the school met and later married a fifteen year-old student (!), Isa Kaufman, who he nicknamed Ariel. She would become his ardent fan and collaborator on later works. Durant received his PhD from Columbia University in 1917. In 1926, he published The Story of Philosophy, which had begun life as a series of pamphlets. The book became a best-seller and freed Durant from his teaching career and allowed him and his wife to travel and to begin work on his life's labor, The Story of Civilization. The work grew to eleven volumes and wasn't completed until 1975. Ariel Durant contributed much to the final four volumes. One of the volumes, Rousseau and Revolution, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1968.Durant was also an avid contributor of articles to magazines such as The Bookman, The Forum, The Nation, etc. and was a very popular speaker on the lecture tour. His other works include Philosophy and the Social Problem (1917), Transition (1927), The Mansions of Philosophy (1929), Adventures in Genius (1931), Tragedy of Russia (1933) and The Pleasures of Philosophy (1953). |
