I've read The Story of Civilization, but I haven't read that - could you tl;dr? My impression of the Durantian Big Picture is a sense that everything recurs, no

I've read The Story of Civilization, but I haven't read that - could you tl;dr? My impression of the Durantian Big Picture is a sense that everything recurs, no big ideas or events are ever really unprecedented, and a kind of skeptical liberalism is the best philosophy. (Minor point: his wife Ariel was a co-author.)