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.