A quick'n'dirty script to describe a CSV file - outputs the header for each column and the maximum width of that column.

describe_csv.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
import csv
import sys
with open(sys.argv[1], 'rb') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=',', quotechar='"')
    header = reader.next()
    columns = []
    for row in reader:
        for i, v in enumerate(row):
            _length = len(v)
            try:
                if _length > columns[i]:
                    columns[i] = _length
            except IndexError:
                columns.append(_length)

for i, v in enumerate(header):
    print '%s  %i' % (v, columns[i])