Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 640 pages
- Published by: Oxford University Press, USA December 10, 1987
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0195050800
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195050806
-
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Review
"Of all the books published so far in this century, the one most assured of being read a hundred years from now is A Study of History."--Clifton Fadiman
"Somervell has performed his chosen task--a labor of love--extremely well.A remarkable achievement."--The
New York Times Book Review
"Somervell's abridgement is an amazingly accurate version of the original."--New York Herald Tribune
"If[you] have time for only one book during this year--and the next and the next--Somervell's abridgement of Toynbee's Study of History should be that book."--The Nation
"A veritable masterpiece of erudition and one of the most suggestive, stimulating and inspiring studies of this age."--Los Angeles Times
Product Description
Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History has been acknowledged as one of the greatest achievements of modern scholarship. A ten-volume analysis of the rise and fall of human civilizations, it is a work of breath-taking breadth and vision. D.C. Somervell's abridgement, in two volumes, of this awesome enterprise, preserves the method, atmosphere, texture, and, in many instances, the very words of the original. Originally published in 1947 and 1957, these two volumes are themselves a great historical achievement.
Volume 1, which abridges the first six volumes of Toynbee's study, includes the Introduction, The Geneses of Civilizations, and The Disintegrations of Civilizations. Volume 2, an abridgement of Volumes VII-X, includes sections on Universal States, Universal churches, Heroic Ages, Contacts Between Civilizations in Space, Contacts Between Civilizations in Time, Law and Freedom in History, The Prospects of the Western Civilization, and the Conclusion.
Of Somervell's work, Toynbee wrote, "The reader now has at his command a uniform abridgement of the whole book, made by a clear mind that has not only mastered the contents but has entered into the writer's outlook and purpose."
Reader ReviewsI don't normally go after other reviewers, but the dolts submitting their thoughts about this author are uninformed in the extreme. If ever there were a "desert island" author and a book that I would want to have with me on said island it is this one (though not the abridged version). Toynbee is a true polymath and one of the progenitors of Jacob Burckhardt, Daniel J. Boorstin, Jacques Barzun, et al. He delivers in concise, exquisitely rendered prose, an overview of western culture that has never been matched in terms of scope and economy - two terms that are not always congruous. For insights into the development of western civilization, its driving forces, main events, greatest influences, etc. , one need look no further than Toynbee. To compare it to Wells' work is to compare persimmons to oranges. One leaves a slightly bitter, puckery taste, the other slakes one's thirst.
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