Sigmund Neumann, review of The Course of German History in The American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 4 (July 1947), pp. 730-731
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A. J. P. Taylor has written just such a challenging essay, packed with substantial summaries and spiced with brilliant observations, reflecting his scholarly maturity, his lucid mind, and his Vienna training under Pribram and the Austrian school of Friedjung and Redlich... An answer to a burning query, it is an impatient book, vivid and tempestuous, pointed and pugnacious, concise and overzealous, severe and sarcastic, ambitious and angry. Grandiose in style it often overshoots its mark. The profound is mixed with the wisecrack. It has the shortcomings of its virtues. It will shock the scholarly reader but it must challenge him too.

— Sigmund Neumann

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A. J. P. Taylor has written just such a challenging essay, packed with substantial summaries and spiced with brilliant observations, reflecting his scholarly maturity, his lucid mind, and his Vienna training under Pribram and the Austrian school of Friedjung and Redlich... An answer to a burning query, it is an impatient book, vivid and tempestuous, pointed and pugnacious, concise and overzealous, severe and sarcastic, ambitious and angry. Grandiose in style it often overshoots its mark. The profound is mixed with the wisecrack. It has the shortcomings of its virtues. It will shock the scholarly reader but it must challenge him too." in the context of "Sigmund Neumann, review of The Course of German History in The American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 4 (July 1947), pp. 730-731" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "A. J. P. Taylor" (Quotes about A. J. P. Taylor) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
A. J. P. Taylor

About A. J. P. Taylor

Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian, journalist, broadcaster and scholar. His approachably written and sometimes contentiously revisionist studies of 19th and early 20th-century subjects brought academic history to a new audience.