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"Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one."
- Robert Byrnes
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| | From Dawn to Decadence:
500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present
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| | by Jacques Barzun
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ZIN Product Number: 10004059
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| | | |  | | | Product Details
 Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 877 pages
Edition: Bargain
Publisher: A0000">$36.00
Readers' Advantage Price:
ISBN: 0060175869
Release Date: Jan 1, 2000
Average Reader Review:   (Based on 5 reviews.)
| |  | | | In Brief
In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world. Each has brought profound change—for instance, the remaking of the commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as decadent.
To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo and, he adds, the scientific foundations for today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the 16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the Me Decade. Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel, defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides.
Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or little-explored in thisattractive venture into cultural history.
| | | | From The Publisher
Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.
In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his usual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have been forgotten or obscured. His compelling chapters--such as "Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarchs' Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester"--show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras.
The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the normal close of great periods and a necessary condition of the creative novelty that will burst forth--tomorrow or the next day.
Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.
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 | | | | | Number of Reviews: 5 Average Rating:
InBecomers
-- *MAXNAMELEN, a learned individual, April 13, 2001
Also Recommended: Life in General
Historical Origins of the Contemporary World
-- A reviewer, August 14, 2000
Why does Barzon hate Shakespeare?
-- Arthur W. Smithretired, a retired engineer from Reading ,Pa, August 4, 2000
Brilliant, but Excessively French
-- ned hopkins, a lover of Berlioz & many others., August 20, 2001
Great book, but Barzun gets cranky in the end
-- Steve Timko, April 16, 2001
| |  | | | The Word On The Street
To define Western culture is the most delicate and difficult of all operations. Jacques Barzun is one of the most cultivated exemplars of Western civilization and his book contains the experience and the reflection of a lifetime. He tells us not to judge past centuries by our standards and to recognize that however different, those centuries have made us what we are.
— Noel Annan, author of Our Age —Noel Annan
From Dawn to Decadence is a personal, witty, learned, bold, and above all, wise retrospect of the past half... millenium. One will read it through with mounting interest and then go back again and again to savor favorite parts of it.
— Gertrude Himmelfarb, author of One Nation, Two Cultures —Gertrude Himmelfarb
| |  | | | | Preface | xi | | Author's Note | xiii | | Prologue: From Current Concerns to the Subject of This Book | xvii | | Part I | From Luther's Ninety-five Theses to Boyle's "Invisible College" | 1 | | Part II | From the Bog and Sand of Versailles to the Tennis Court | 237 | | Part III | From Faust, Part I, to the "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" | 463 | | Part IV | From "The Great Illusion" to "Western Civ Has Got to Go" | 681 | | Reference Notes | 803 | | Index of Persons | 829 | | Index of Subjects | 853 |
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From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present , by Jacques Barzun
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| | | | | | Keywords
Civilization, Western, Europe, Intellectual life, Civilization, Learning and scholarship, Modern World History (Circa 1450 To Present), History - General History, History, World, General, History, Civilization, Europe, Intellectual life, Civilization, Western, Learning and scholarship
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