Arnold Toynbee was the most prolific historian of the twentieth century. In his massive A Study of History, Toynbee made a comparative study of all the world's civilizations, surviving and extinct, analyzing their rise, growth, breakdown, and disintegration. Arnold Toynbee and the Western Tradition summarizes and appraises Toynbee's understanding of the nature, evolution, and destiny of Western civilization, focusing on his critique of the liberal-rational tradition.