An inquiry concerned with developing the concept of style as a useful tool in analyzing civilization: its characteristics, its essential nature, its features in the past, its future prospects. Civilizations are among the most complex groups of phenomena known to man. We possess only partial and scattered techniques to help us know what originates and shapes civilizations. Before an understanding of cause can be attained, it is necessary to understand the effects; the qualities and traits of civilizations,
A. L. Kroeber here reviews some of the more notable thinking of the past century on the nature of civilizations and presents an analysis of the factor of style. Style is a broad generic concept, but it is characteristic distinctive; it refers to manner or mode. The book discusses the kinds and properties of style, for example, in gastronomy and dress; style in the fine arts; Spengler's portrayal of Greek culture as a style, and the ideas of other scholars, who have written on the comparison of civiliza-tions: Danilevsky, Toynbee, Collingwood, and Sorokin.