I posted the above to get folks actually to look at the Durant volumes. They were written over decades, and the authors are painfully aware of their omissions and limitations. Their goal is not to report everything that happened, but to focus on a historic culture that accumulated and preserved matters of value and importance that have informed our world and are now, potentially, available for others to consider. This is a highly selective kind of story--and the attempt to tell it borders on an "absurd enterprise" partly because it involves tracing the development of historical hopes: for liberty, enlightenment, human dignity, democracy, philosophy. It leaves out a lot that we would rather not inherit. I myself have plenty of disagreements with the project and the hierarchy of ideals this history carries and of course the omissions. But such histories of culture are valuable. We need more of them.