Oxford University Press, USA A Study of History: Volume I: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI

Author is very well informed and there is also elements of philosophy and religious history within the book. Reader must really concentrate as text can involve moving from one time and/or geographical location to another often within one paragraph to the next. I followed the main thrust of the book and the general framework is as follows.Man forms civilisations as he rises to environmental challenges to particular geographical locations. Once a civilisation is formed societal institutions such as political, religious and legal establishments arise. This society can grow as creative elements, individually, or collectively, such as the Italians during their Renaissance can lead and evolve their societal culture by mimesis. Internal and/or external pressures can then influence the nature of a society. External pressures include assimilation to another polity or war being waged upon the said society by barbarian war lords. Internal pressures can be the penalisation of a group of peoples such as the Jewish (who subsequently underwent a Diaspora) or the Christians in Rome.Finally civilisations can then suffer disintegration as forces such as revolution (e.g. in France), political or social decay (such as in Rome or Egypt), or civil war (in Hellenic Greece) take place.I found the book to take the reader to a new depth in the study of history, and while heavy going in places it was accessible. I hope others can take as much from the book as I did

Book is quite expensive, but worth the buy.

Hard to imagine grasping the drift of contemporary events without the overview provided by this Toynbee study. Toynbee worked on this 12 volume study from the mid-1920's to the late 1940's. His interest has been to gather together the recorded evidence of all the civilizations, of which he forms his study of the 20 plus civilations that he is able to identify. He admits that this is too few to reach scientific conclusions. He makes some interesting observations however: great civilizations are germinated from almost impossible challenges that are successfully mounted. Success of course produces new challenges. These challenges produce responses and on average he finds that there is a pattern of 3 such successful challenges before the civilization goes into decline. The downside of civilizations has its own peculiar patterns of decline, some of which have lasted for a 1000 years or more. This section may be of particular interest to students of contemporary events. Many are curious if western civilization is in decline as suggested by Oswald Spengler Decline of the West. Whether it is or not, the current political division concerning Making America Great Again is a revival of old nationalism that is resisting A One World View of history. By the way, for those who want a shorter study there is an abridge version of two volumes by Somervell also called A Study of History. As an appendix, this version has a section called "The Argument" that gives the impatient reader a summary of all of Toynbee's points in just a few pages.

Toynbee write in a similar manner to me, so I find his works easy to read. This book is an abridged version of his complete works of "A Study of History". Thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit from one of the masters of history education.

Si la thèse de l'église universelle et des "prolétariats intérieurs et extérieurs" me paraît peu convaincante, la richesse de l'analyse, la hauteur de vue et le caractère éminemment transverse et global de la réflexion d'Arnold Toynbee font de ce livre un monument de la pensée humaine. Rien de moins!