Books: Toynbee in the PX

AMERICA AND THE WORLD REVOLUTION (231 pp.)—Arnold J. Toynbee— Oxford ($4.75).

While most historians have trouble explaining one civilization, British Historian Arnold Toynbee sweeps grandly over them all, comparing Machiavelli to St. Benedict, Moses to Mohammed. But a historian who paints so vast a canvas is bound to fudge some of the details. One of the disconcerting details of A Study of History has now been blown up to book-length size, where it is more disturbing than ever. It is Toynbee's casual indifference to the menace of Communism.

This collection of recent Toynbee lectures makes the point that Communism is merely a part...