Braudel summarizes the broad themes of his three-volume Civilisation materielle et capitalisme, 1400-1800 and offers his reflections on the historian's craft and on the nature of the historical imagination... Taken as a whole, the book is provocative and stimulating. On occasion, it rises to revelation when two or three sentences of compressed but brilliant prose force us to reconsider the events of an entire century or the history of a continent.