Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
The Prophet
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life
by William H. McNeill
Oxford University Press, 346 pp., $24.95
Thirty-five years ago Arnold Toynbee's Study of History was a world best seller. It was described as 'the greatest work of history ever written.' It conquered first America, then the Muslim East, then Japan. Its author, hailed as 'the most renowned scholar in the world,' 'a universal sage,' circled the globe in triumph, receiving homage wherever he went. At the height of his fame I rashly wrote a dissentient essay. It was denounced by a Roman Catholic priest (who refused to read it) as 'blasphemy' and by a Muslim writer as 'a symptom of intellectual chaos.'[1] Today the cult has subsided. The ten thick volumes of the Study sit undisturbed on the library shelves. Who will ever read them? A few Ph.D. students perhaps, desperate for a subject. Did anyone in fact ever read them in toto? I doubt it.
Review, 7730 words
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