In this article we try to relate the general features of several types of heat capacity curves to the underlying energy level spectrum. We are interested in heat capacity “anomalies” (i.e., heat capacities which occur in addition to the usual lattice vibration and conduction electron contributions) and restrict ourselves to systems which can be described on an independent particle basis. We begin by considering Schottky anomalies and show the effects on the heat capacity of varying the spacings and degeneracies of the energy levels. The relation between the Schottky anomaly arising from the equally spaced nondegenerate levels of the Brillouin function and the heat capacity of the Einstein function is discussed. The effects on the heat capacity of a marked local change in the density of states of an otherwise uniform energy-level spectrum is considered. The heat capacities of the free rotor and the molecular field model are used to exemplify particular points of the discussion.