The distinguished historian John Lukacs here presents a series of fictionalized vignettes of daily life as experienced by ordinary individuals (most often in the U.S., although Lukacs takes us to some European countries as well), each in a year from 1901 - 1969, and each followed by a short dialogue in which the author argues with an alter ego over why he has chosen to develop a given scenario in that particular year and what its significance might be. The period represents the life of a single man, Kensington, which Lukacs weaves in and out of the text and through which can be traced the leitmotif of the book: the decline of Anglo-American civilization and of the ideal of the gentleman. A history of manners and mores, a delightful -- and poignant succession of sketches, the book brings the reader into the inner and often undeclared lives of individual men and women, at the same time placing them in the larger dramas of historical process in this century.