One of the difficulties in talking about historical generalizations is the problem of finding a language in the middle ground between abstract speculation and mere recording of raw empirical data. However difficult this task might be, the intellectual process involved in historical generalization is a useful one, inviting reflection and discussion.

The five historians who have contributed to this volume chose their own topics. Thus the book as a whole is not a sequence but a cluster, in which not only the varying emphasis—here largely on the practical, there largely on the theoretical—but also the choice of topics in itself illustrates the pluralistic nature of historical generalizations.

Contributors: H. Stuart Hughes, Isaiah Berlin, David M. Potter, Albert Guérard, and Crane Brinton.