[4]The book is divided into four sections corresponding to the four periods mentioned above, which are then subdivided into chapters, some of which are organized around specific ideas, and others around what he calls "cross-sections" of cities or regions at particular historical moments.

He highlights several recurrent themes throughout Western thought, including Abstraction, Analysis, Emancipation, Individualism, Primitivism, Scientism, Secularism, and Self-Consciousness.

The review praised Barzun for writing in "a light, lucid, epigrammatic style", but described his judgments of historical figures as "at best otiose and...[at times] ludicrously banal.

"[7] In the New York Times, William Everdell said the book was "encyclopedic without being discontinuous" and "peerless - on every century but [the twentieth]", chiding Barzun for minor errors and for "writ[ing] the history of liberalism as if democracy had not improved it.

"[8] First Things remarked, "We get assessments, sometimes quite idiosyncratic ones, of almost all the great names of the modern era, but many of the biographies are of persons the author deems worthy-but-obscure.