What does an historian’s style reveal? In this original and lucid guide to the proper reading of Gibbon, Ranke, Macaulay, and Burckhardt—great historians who were also great stylists—Peter Gay demonstrates that, style is an invaluable clue to the historian's insight. Thus, for Peter Gay, style is the key to culture, and the “truth” of history—as it helps to define that culture—can only be fully understood through an objective and thorough analysis of all its elements.