From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present Reviews

• 
  WarpDrive

  This is Barzun's “magnum opus”: an original, multi-faceted, ambitious interpretation of the cultural history of the West of the last half millennium. This is a unique, idiosyncratic, provocative work that is definitely not a linear, dispassionate account, but a critical, personal and thorough re-evaluation of the modern era.
  
  Before getting into the merits of this important work, it is necessary to highlight that this book is quite heavily weighted towards what is commonly called “the fine arts” (literature, poetry, music, painting), occasionally at the significant expense of other fundamental aspects of European culture (philosophy and science, in particular). Moreover, the environmental and political/military influences, that played such an important role in the development of the European cultural evolution in the last half millennium, are occasionally underestimated and frequently treated too succinctly.
  
  The major and significant limitation of Barzun's historical and cultural perspective is, in my opinion, his thinly disguised dismissive, if not outright hostile, attitude towards the sciences and technology, compounded by embarrassing mistakes whenever he briefly ventures into the history of science: for example he says that Newton's notation for the calculus rather than Leibniz's is the notation that is still currently in use; his definition of chaos theory betrays his clear ignorance of what it is about, and when referring to the second law of thermodynamics he says that it “records how matter and energy perpetually disintegrate” (sigh).
  He confuses/identifies science with scientism, analysis with reductionism; and rather than appreciating the power of scientific thinking to identify patterns out of disorder, and the epistemological strength of the scientific method, he claims that science “leaves behind the facts of experience”. Science is not about “leaving behind the facts of experience”, it is about making order and sense out of them! Another sentence that clearly betrays his attitude: “faith in science excludes dissent on important matters; the method brings everyone to a single state of mind”. It is, in my opinion, no coincidence that the only philosopher of science who really gets any attention in his book is Thomas Kuhn – who else. To him, Internet “makes still more general the nerveless mode of existence – sitting and staring” - he ignores the tremendous push towards the democratization of cultural opportunities that Internet has been responsible for in recent times (how about MOOCs, arXiv.org, Project Gutenberg, Good Reads etc.). But I get the strong feeling that, in his ultimately conservative and possibly even elitist view of culture, these are aspects that would not gain his approval.
  Coming to the history of philosophical thought, he has a clear preference for Schopenhauer - this is OK, after all he is one of my favourite philosophers! :-) - but I think that his treatment of Kant is way too simplified and succinct, and it does not fairly reflect the fundamental importance of this great thinker in the development of European thinking. Nietzsche is treated quite well, but I strongly disagree with the author's perspective of Existentialism, which he mainly sees as a negative, pessimistic, “decadent” current of thought, and which I personally consider quite the opposite: in my view there is, in Existentialism, also an element of profoundly liberating, deeply invigorating, almost Nietzschean and ultimately optimistic urge for Man to create His own meaning. It must also be said that many important philosophers do not get mentioned, while for example obscure writers get the attention of the author.
  
  On the positive side, the author is an absolute master in providing a multi-perspectival, realistic, credible and nuanced perspective of the ideological, social and cultural climate of some of the most important or interesting historical periods/events/trends of the last 500 years: such as Humanism, the Protestant Reformation, the period of Charles V, Venice around 1650, the emergence of Absolutism, The Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the Romanticism, which are all masterfully brought to life by the author. The author is erudite, highly original and insightful. These parts are riveting, instructive, of high scholarly value, fully rounded, and a joy to read – historical writing at its best. Many very interesting points are elaborated convincingly and with strength – he destroys several common misconceptions and intellectual superstitions that have been perpetuated by much popular history writing. There are so many interesting and original points that I can only just begin to list them within the constraints of a book review. Just a few examples: I really liked how he debunks the myth that Galileo was tried because the Inquisition believed the Copernican model threatened the Church's teachings and Man’s place in the Universe, and also how the author highlights some deeply reactionary aspects of the Reformation. His rendering of the unique and utterly fascinating Venetian Republic is masterful. His debunking of the erroneous concept of the Middle Ages as divorced from the legacy and heritage of the culture of Classical Times is convincing and well argued.
  
  It must be said though that, maybe in the effort of pursuing originality at all costs, the author occasionally makes some questionable, or at least severely selective or highly idiosyncratic, statements: for example when he claims that "the Kaiser did everything in his power for Austria to avert war" – from what I remember this is a statement that, at best, only partially represents what happened: in reality Wilhelm and his Chancellor, after the assassination, incited Austria-Hungary to exact revenge against Serbia and pushed it to declare an ultimatum! Events then quickly spiraled out of control, but Wilhelm appeared not to foresee (or did not want to foresee) the consequences of the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia, and when he later feebly attempted to scale things back, it was too late, and he was dissuaded by the German generals, who convinced him that Germany would easily win the war. Hardly a committed pacifist, I would think.
  While I am one who agrees that WWI Germany has often received an unfair treatment in much historical writing, I can't agree with the apologetic attitude of the author in this particular instance.
  There is also an embarrassing, huge mistake in page 225, when the author states that the Carolingian Renaissance was “swamped by a fresh wave of Germanic invaders – Franks, Vandals, and Goths” (sigh).
  
  Apart from these issues, though, the author's historical writing is generally compelling, precise, very interesting and rich with insights. I also strongly agree with the author's perspective on historical research: contrarily to the fashionable historical over-determinism that sadly affects too many authors (see my review about the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" as a glaring example of such approach), the author correctly states that: “to begin with, cause in history cannot be ascertained any better than motive in its human agents. Both must be represented as probable, and it is wiser to speak of conditions rather than causes, and of influence rather than a force making for change”. I would personally add to the recipe the strong element of pure, simple element of randomness, and irreducible elements of feedback loops and of chaotic behaviour that necessarily govern multi-agent complex systems such as human societies.
  
  The author narrative style is quaintly and charmingly unique, highly original, somewhat old-fashioned and ornate, but pleasant and effective enough to make reading this book a generally highly pleasant experience – it just takes a little while to get fully used to it. Many under-appreciated and under-reported authors and thinkers are dutifully represented, and this is highly laudable, but occasionally the author really goes too far, and in such cases the narrative becomes a dull list of unknown authors and books that are only very succinctly described, that are forgotten as soon as the reader turns the page, and that add absolutely nothing to the value of the overall story.
  
  The final chapter (the one dealing with contemporary times) is unfortunately a significant disappointment and of much lesser quality than all the other chapters (a real pity in what is otherwise such an important and valuable book): it amounts to no much more than a series of rantings about a supposed decadence of contemporary “demotic” society – and this is done from a point of view that is difficult not to perceive as really conservative, even plain anachronistic at times.
  
  Regardless of these issues, it is important to highlight however that this is a very important and ambitious book, well written and highly insightful and original, interesting and a pleasurable reading experience, instructive and highly recommended to anybody interested in the Western cultural history of the last 500 years.
  
  3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).
• 
  Bentley

  
  Brief synopsis: A book for the stalwart who love learning and intellectual gymnastics. A brain workout.
  
  I have to agree with Elizabeth S who reviewed as follows:
  
  A very deep read. One of those that, to really enjoy, takes more time than just the reading time. It isn't a book to read, it is a book to experience. A book that, when you are done, you feel you know less than you thought you knew when you started. Overall, absolutely amazing.
  
  Jacques Barzun is extremely well respected and won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for this epic. For those folks who devote the time and the energy into actually reading and studying the book; this book is like a college program in cultural history. You will learn that much.
  
  There are so many sidebar discussions and detours that one can take reading this book. I marveled at the knowledge and the breadth of Mr. Barzun's intellect. Yes, he did have a few opinions; but that made the reading that much more personal and sometimes controversial.
  
  This bears a careful, slow and thoughtful reading. Those folks who want a quick mystery or want to be entertained by a book will not enjoy this work at all. If you give up on things easily, you will not have the stamina to complete this opus. This is not a Patterson or a Grafton novel.
  
  If you love to be tested, be prodded into exploring ideas and different ways of thinking, you will love From Dawn to Decadence.
  
  I found in our group discussions that those folks who just did not want to dive in and challenge themselves and/or had fitful starts and finishes as they read the book will not get anything out of the book at all; in fact those folks could not finish it and if they somehow finally held their nose and stuck it out...they did not enjoy the experience.
  
  The book has to be read continuously so that all of the pieces fit together and the reader sees their dependencies; otherwise you will be totally lost and not see the causal relationships.
  
  The book is really a marvel and easily 100 years of a lifelong love of learning is poured into this cultural history masterpiece by Barzun - this is really his life's work and all of his learning along with the touch of a brilliant mind really inspired me.
  
  You may not always agree with some of his opinions and statements. I found more than a few of these (smile).
  
  But what is even more remarkable is that Barzun, himself, would be happy that you challenged him or his ideas...that was the kind of professor he once was. So for those who do not give up easily and can persevere and accept challenges in learning and in life, this is the book for you.
  
  If you want to be entertained, you will never finish this book or like it one iota...so be forewarned. It is a little like undertaking War and Peace without those beloved characters; it is more like reading a college text.
  
  I was in awe of the book; but I can understand that it is not for everyone.
• 
  Szplug

  Perhaps the single most amazing thing about this tome - an absolutely brilliant compendium of wisdom, erudition, commentary, and insight, written with a detached passion that illuminates the topics and breathes life into its actors - is that Barzun assembled most of this five-star gem whilst in his early nineties! That the cobwebs of senescence have never been allowed to gather in this transplanted Frenchman's mind becomes abundantly clear as one works their way through this absolute exemplarity of a cultural history.
  
  Taking as his lift-off point the nailing of Luther's ninety-five theses to a church-door in Wittenberg, Barzun covers virtually every significant Western cultural, intellectual, literary and/or artistic achievement - through flowing paragraphs and scattered aphoristic quotes, all the while directing the reader to the most salutary literature on the specific topic at hand. With scarcely a dull moment or uninteresting subject over the course of some nine hundred pages and five hundred years, this magnificent achievement in western history from a conservative viewpoint reaches for the stars and comes awfully close to brushing them.
• 
  booklady

  How can anyone (much less me!) possibly write a review which does justice to a book like this?! And even to call it a mere book seems like an injustice to this tome. It seemed more like an encyclopedia, a tour de force, a library unto itself.
  
  First off, I have had my audio edition of it for several years but shortly after beginning to listen I knew I HAD to have a written copy as well because I could see there was just SO MUCH material here I would want to refer back to—names, dates, quotes, titles, etc.—that without a text copy, I might as well not even listen to it. So, I paused in my listening to acquire a used copy to follow along as I listened.
  
  Next, I will say that I have only listened once which is not saying much. Listening once to a book like this is like saying, “Oh yes I passed through Rome once for a day.” Big deal! You know nothing and have not begun to assimilate what Mr. Barzun has written. Still, I am glad that I have done this much because I do at least have something of the lay of the land and I know generally where things are when I want to return—God granting me that much time.
  
  Almost every topic Barzun covered he had a book or books to recommend for further information. Ah to live so long! Will there be libraries in the afterlife? Hopefully so, and hopefully they will not always be purging the old ones as our libraries here do! I digress…
  
  The real value of From Dawn to Decadence is that it is the magnum opus of a genuinely Great Mind near the end of life. And while you may not agree with all of his conclusions, and hopefully you don’t, there is the benefit of knowing he has probably studied the cultural history of this era more than any other soul who has ever lived. And it is also a resource to return to again and again for information, which I am quite sure I will do.
  
  Also, it was a cultural history, i.e., it covers those aspects often overlooked by more conventional historians—religion, literature, music, art, economics, popular beliefs, social trends, and their impact on each other and on daily life—making it a unique addition to the deposit of our common understanding of ourselves over time.
  
  Thank you so much Mr. Barzun for all your hard work. I stand in admiration of your accomplishment! And thank you also for introducing me to more than a few new authors! Just when I think I have a fairly good handle on most of the big Western names in literature, I discover there are a bunch more. Yay!
  
  Most highly recommended!
  
  
  
  March 11, 2021: After 6 months, I finally finished it! What an accomplishment for the author! And I feel like I achieved something as its reader as well, though I only listened to it. Still, persisting to the end was almost like taking a college course. Mr. Barzun is hyper-intelligent. It will take a little while to put together a review, if I can even manage to do one, but I am going to try.
  
  September 28, 2020: This book is phenomenal! It is so rich I am in awe of what the author knows and has read. Almost every other paragraph has this statement, “The book to read for further information is...” Not that I want to read all of them, but I keep making note of those I do and have significantly added to my ‘to-read’ list! I also keep learning all these little tidbits of information, not to mention the famous quotes which pepper the pages, at least one to every two-page spread. He provides an excellent defense of poor Christopher Columbus, too long to reproduce here, but basically placing him squarely in the larger tradition of the history of humanity where ‘might makes right’ – a saying which is so well known, not because it is just, but because it's truth has been confirmed throughout history across cultures, races, and religions, even for the native peoples, who we want to assume all lived peacefully among themselves. This is a myth. Yes, there were some peaceful tribes, that is true. There were also some who owned slaves and had barbaric practices. However, warlike or not, the author does not say nor imply this justifies the great atrocities committed by Europeans, but he wants to draw attention to the good Europeans who fought for and helped the native peoples as well as the prevailing mores, conditions and politics of an era so very different from our own. People have been conquering each other, stealing land, taking hostages, raping and subjugating people from the beginning of time. Is it ‘nice’? Of course not! But to blame poor Columbus for all that happened after his voyages is ludicrous!
  
  The author introduces many little-known women who were influential in during these years and how they impacted the history. This is a cultural and religious history as much as it is a chronological report of the time. It will not be easy to review. I’m pausing here on p.111.
• 
  Lynn Buschhoff

  This a book for the person who thinks that they will not live long enough to learn everything they want to learn. It is huge. It is marvelous. If one looks at the bibliography, it is stunning that any one person could have accessed all this knowledge. This book is 500 hundred year of Western culture, everything from politics, to cookbooks. It took me from October to May to read this book ( of course I put it down for periods or time to read a fast mystery or thriller for a break) but I felt like I had climbed a mental Mt Everest when I finished. If was a single girl, the line that a guy could use to pick me up would be, "Have your read from DAWN TO DECADENCE?". I wish I could give it ten stars
• 
  David Withun

  -
• 
  Boris Glebov

  A book to read with your pinky out.
  
  Barzun's erudition is dazzling. Analysis, however, is often absent or rather shallow. A good analogy for this work is like that first intro paragraph of a Wikipedia article. It gives you a great sense of the subject without any considerable depth, just few key highlights aside.
  
  He does draw a few arcs of ideas throughout the 500 years of Western European history, but that insight is nothing groundbreaking. The greatest value is his intricate knowledge of an endless array of brilliant characters who play important roles in Europe's intellectual and cultural development. However the barrage of names and works is overwhelming, and the haphazard organization of the book makes it a poor reference. I actually wish I kept some notes while reading it.
  
  Despite the considerable length - 800 pages of densely set text - the scope is quite narrow. The book really focuses on England, France, and Germany. Spain and Italy are give some token attention. Russia and the US are side attraction. South America is covered in a brief, glancing reference to Pablo Neruda.
  
  References to scientific concepts are inept. References to political history are scant.
  
  The best part of the book is that dedicated to the 1800s, an epoch he romanticizes unabashedly - though this leads him to provide the most acute observations and most detailed discussions. His analysis of the 20th century is deeply flawed. In the last 30 pages of the book, he degenerates into an old man yelling at clouds - he is completely at sea culturally. His discussion of music, for example, focuses largely on abstract experimentalists such as John Cage - jazz and blues get a passing mention, while punk and electronika get nothing at all, even though any one of those movements had a greater political, social, and cultural weight than the experimental evolutions of "classical" music.
  
  Barzun's knowledge is vast, and his writing is eloquent. But the book suffers from too broad a take, and Barzun's own monarchist tendencies which make him sound dismissive and ridiculous.
• 
  Jorge

  Jacques Barzun fue un connotado historiador y escritor francés cuyo poderoso intelecto le permitió abordar de manera brillante diversos temas como la historia de las ideas, el arte, la ciencia, la política y la sociedad entre otros.
  
  Esta obra en particular nos habla prolijamente del surgimiento y evolución de las ideas, la ciencia, el arte, la política, la educación, en una palabra de todo aquello que imbrica al ser humano y que abarca los últimos 500 años de los cuales el autor fue testigo presencial de los últimos 105. Prácticamente acudió a todo el acontecer humano del siglo XX dada su longeva vida. La obra de Barzun es un portento que me ha dejado sorprendido con ese caudal de sabiduría que derrocha a lo largo y ancho del libro y también con esa capacidad para poder expresar todo ese conocimiento. Creo que describir 500 años en 1,300 páginas no está nada mal. Esta colosal tarea requiere de vastísimos conocimientos, de una gran capacidad de síntesis, de un talento enorme y de un gran sentido de organización para ser capaz de difundirla de manera accesible.
  Además de un gran historiador considero que Jacques Barzun es un magnífico escritor pues todos sus conocimientos los ha sabido expresar con entusiasmo, ponderación y sencillez; la lectura es amena y se hace inteligible en la mayor parte de la obra, excepto cuando incurre en alguna clase de digresiones y abstracciones para dilucidar una idea o un término que él considera importante para seguir conectando y avanzando en su obra.
  
  Después de haber concluido de leer este libro me queda la sensación de que vivimos en un mundo tan caótico como maravilloso, aunque parezca un contrasentido. Ahora sé con certeza que me encuentro sostenido por miles de manos, de mentes, de conciencias, de inquietudes, ideas, sufrimientos, talentos, debates y empeños de millones de seres humanos que vivieron en el pasado y que nos elevan a un mundo que ha llegado a una altura insospechada y es ahí donde ahora nos ha tocado vivir: una elevada cima conquistada por todas esas personas a las que les tocó vivir antes que a nosotros y que, repito, es un mundo sumido en un caos pero también un mundo maravilloso y lleno de hazañas. De nosotros depende qué lado es el que queremos ver o vivir.
  
  Es tan vasta y deslumbrante esta obra que me siento incapaz de hacer una reseña decorosa sólo quisiera recordar, tal y como el autor lo hace en un apartado de su libro o, más que recordar, hacer una mención de todas aquellas personas que participaron en este prodigioso proceso que ha llevado a la humanidad al estado que guarda el mundo actualmente; esas personas ya olvidadas para siempre que no alcanzaron un lugar en la historia ya que de hecho sería imposible abarcar ese infinito universo de gente. Se trata de personas desaparecidas en las arenas del tiempo pero que pusieron su granito de esfuerzo, talento y buena voluntad para que pudiésemos acceder al mundo actual. El autor los recuerda someramente en algún pasaje de su obra con el muy apropiado nombre de “La Tropa Olvidada” y menciona a algunos personajes totalmente desconocidos para mí pero que en su tiempo tuvieron notoriedad por alguna razón. Héroes anónimos para la eternidad.
  
  Tomando una de tantas ideas que vierte el autor quisiera plasmar su concepto sobre la labor de la historia: “La historia es una obra de arte literario que versa sobre el cambio cultural y es una influencia moralizante por los llamativos ejemplos de virtud y vicio que presenta”
  
  Finalmente concluyó con algunas palabras que atraviesan todo el texto y que dado que aparecen enfatizadas una y otra vez durante la obra entera parecieran ser conceptos claros que han guiado o delimitado un poco la evolución de la humanidad en la época descrita:
  • Emancipación.
  • Primitivismo.
  • Individualismo.
  • Abstracción
  • Secularización.
  • Análisis.
  • Separatismo.
  • Autoconciencia.
  
  La obra de Barzun inevitablemente nos incita a pensar en todos los caminos y disyuntivas que ha acometido el Hombre con todas sus consecuencias buenas y malas y al mismo tiempo nos hace cavilar sobre la validez de algunas sendas sobre las que caminamos aún y sobre todos nos hace dudar sobre qué caminos habrá que tomar para el futuro.
  Habiendo concluido esta titánica obra, y al igual que el mundo, he quedado sumido en el caos y la estupefacción, asombrado con tantas ideas, obras, debates, descubrimientos, luchas, nombres, inventos, guerras, valores y mucho más: un alud se me ha venido encima y espero no dure mucho esta barahúnda mental en que me encuentro.
  
  
• 
  Bob Mustin

  I came across Jacques Barzun in the late nineties as his book, From Dawn to Decadence - 1500 to the Present - 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, began to gain traction. I was still bogged down in an engineering career then, had divorced my first wife and 2.4 kids, and was in the early stages of re-marriage, but I felt compelled by the idea of this book and began to read it in what spare time I could summon.
  
  
  What a book! And what a mind. Barzun was in his mid-nineties then, an age in which you - stereotypically - expect to listen to addled, semi-remembered stories from these elderlies and watch them hobble from bed to bathroom on a rickety walker. Not so with Barzun, as this book attests.
  
  He had and eye on the past, to be sure, and he wasn't about to be ensnared by the candy floss of modern culture. We in our age tend to dismiss the elderly, but in previous eras, younger folk sought out these aged ones, simply because they'd seen so much of life and consequently were expected to have a broader vision of where their society had come from, where it was going. Sometimes such views were a tad jaundiced, but it has always been hard to dismiss the views of someone who has seen so much of life.
  
  Barzun's book, Dawn to Decadence, gives us both ends of this personal spectrum. In it he traces western society's evolution from its Greek and Roman roots, in which our understanding of the world we live in - and of ourselves - began to develop from the minds and experiences of a few. Subsequent cultures built on the ideas of these few individuals, then more collective ideas wrung from cities, then nations, each differing to a great degree in its approaches to life and culture based on what each had to work with, geographically and ethnically.
  
  What seems to have troubled Barzun was the ephemeralization of culture as it began to manifest in the late 1800 and as it reached a crescendo in our modern times. Art, literature, philosophy, politics - all these and more - began to reach deep within the global hodgepodge to find some common, abstracted ground. This is where we seem logjammed today with our postmodern sensibilities (note that postmodernism isn't a what-is; instead it's a what-is-not), and this is where Barzun began to wring his hands. As tribal, national, and regional cultures interacted more and more, there were bound to be conflicts in habits and beliefs, and this has led to all of today's "isms," (Pick one or a pair: socialism, fascism, communism, Catholicism, Mormonism, evangelism, modernism, postmodernism...on and on).
  
  A great deal of our current social angst has its roots in our clinging belief in practices that led to many of western society's earlier stages: conflict, violence, war. These now are cultural norms - from the push-pull of regional conflicts to man-woman interactions - and Barzun was right to point this out. And he was also right in another thing: our urge for some abstract common ground begat superficiality: fashion, political correctness, compounding fantasies in politics and religion, and even science.
  
  But is Barzun right? Will we look over our shoulders, just before we see the dark side of the sod, and see western society fallen to a smoldering piles of ashes? We can't know, of course, because there are too many steps yet to take, too many possibilities yet unborn. All we can know is that we're on the cusp of something. We at least owe Jacques Barzun a tip of the hat for bringing us up to speed on this realization.
  
• 
  Andrew

  This one was a bit of an impulse buy. Generally, I am one to do my due diligence with book purchases by reading reviews both favorable and unfavorable. Seeing the praise being lavished upon this work with so few exceptions, however, I decided to throw caution to the wind and give this a try. Regrettably, this haphazard approach did not pay off.
  
  Admittedly, I did not finish this book, plodding through 200 or so pages, and so cannot give this book the fair, and thoroughgoing review it deserves considering its impressive scope. For readers more intrepid than I who finished this you have my admiration, because 200 pages felt like a labor. Like a few others, I found very little in terms of content and analysis to make continued reading worthwhile. Barzun's style is overly and pointlessly pedantic (quibbling over language evolution and etymology despite an apparent lack of understanding of both), and most of his analysis, which amounts to little more than pithy invective, fails to adequately address historical events in terms of their significance in regards to cause and effect. Worse still is his arbitrary value judgments of historical figures, deciding that Columbus was blameless more or less for the horrors visited upon the natives -- characterizing him as a victim of the beliefs of the time. Yet, he seems to have no qualms about censuring modernists of the day and going so far as to call them "bigoted."
  
  Unless this book does an about-face in terms of style and execution over the remaining 700 pages, I wouldn't recommend this book to novice history buffs, let alone serious ones. Barzun's heavy-handed analyses, and smugness which he hides under the aegis of stilted erudition, make for a boring, unfulfilling read heavy on opinion and word count, but sorely lacking in content and scholarly expertise. Avoid this one.
  
  
• 
  Todd Stockslager

  Review title: Draw up a chair; Jacques Barzun has a treasure map to share
  The treasure is the inheritance of the 500 years of Western cultural life of Barzun's subtitle that is at my fingertips today. The map is Barzun's lifework documented in 800-plus pages of hard-learned and hand-drawn (as it were) survey marking the the routes to the treasure caches that have been created, assembled, saved, and lost over the five centuries of modern Western culture.
  
  While this is a survey in the grand professorial style (for example, Barzun will define each of those terms ending the previous paragraph), this is no mere textbook. At age 93 when this book was published in 2000, Barzun has lived through almost 20% of the period he covers, and he approaches the topic with the personal knowledge and style that his eminence has earned. He has done his research, he has drawn the map himself with a craftsmanship all his own, and he is going to share it with us with his own style as well.
  
  As he unfolds the map in front of us, Barzun is going to define the term "decadence" lest we question his relevance and attempt to pigeonhole him as a sour old man intent on preserving the way things used to be. Decadence is not a slur, it is a technical term defined as: "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal. . . . A decadent culture offers opportunities chiefly to the satirist" (p. 11). As his finger traces the path to today's landscape, it lands in a spot where art is "intended to be uninspired. . . . The ridicule mocks itself as well as its object" (p. 731).
  
  No mere transcriber, Barzun brings a method and a plan to his map of Western cultural life. It advanced (yes, that term will be defined as well) through four revolutions roughly 125 years apart:
  
  The 16th Century religious revolution known as the Protestant Reformation
  The 17th and 18th Century monarchical revolution represented by the English and the French civil wars
  The 19th Century liberal revolution that enthroned the individual and individualism represented by Evolution (more definitions ensue) in the sciences and Romanticism in the arts.
  The 20th Century social revolution that established collective individualism, a working out of the effects of the first three revolutions that is still underway, even after the establishment and partial dismantling of massive socialism in political organization.
  
  
  Throughout these revolutions, Barzun traces the interplay of major recurring themes (highlighted in caps in his text):
  
  emancipation, or universal independence
  primitivism, or reversion to the beginning to cleanse current culture
  individualism
  secularism, which emerged from humanism, or "dealing with the affairs of the world in a man-centered way" (p. 44).
  self-consciousness, or awareness of the individual as distinct
  specialism
  analysis
  reductivism
  scientism, defined as using the methods of science in all forms of experience to solve every issue
  abstraction
  
  
  With his craftsmanship Barzun brings his own unique formatting to this book, which includes the references to the major themes in caps throughout the book. Introductions to the biographies and ideas of key participants are announced by bold and centered headings. Representative quotes from these and other contemporaries are placed in bold in marginal sidebars that intrude on the left or right margins of the main text. Further reading (a full curriculum of great literature) is called out in the main text by short parenthetical references to author/title instead of footnotes or endnotes. The one formatting choice that I felt an unnecessary oddity was his decision to abbreviate Century to C, so 16th Century becomes "16C", ostensibly to save space (in a book that totals nearly 900 pages?!).
  
  So, we are seated around the map laid out on the table in Barzun's study, and we see the outlines of the map. Now, in the manner of a Sherlock Holmes, Barzun takes his time lighting his pipe, leans toward us over the map, and traces the routes through history to today in detail, again in a style all his own. This is fine writing by a powerful and opinionated mind. I found myself taking notes of ideas, turns of phrase, and sources i I wanted to followup on. Just a selection of those notes:
  
  p. 23: Disbelief can be explained as "perverse wickedness". Unbelief is different and far more unsettling. The Protestant Reformation destroyed the possibility of "single truth". Now believers are surrounded by unbelievers--and believers in different things.
  p. 134-135 (in reference to the Stoics): Are we learning how to live, or learning to die (philosophy vs. theology)?
  p. 153: In art we have progressed from epic hero to tragic hero to common hero to anti-hero.
  p. 348: As Barzun discusses why a writer who was considered the best by his contemporaries but completely forgotten by history, I wonder which very well known current writers, artists, directors, musicians will be completely forgotten in future generations?
  p. 355: "The good sentence is the clockwork put back together again after careful analysis . . . but it is not natural. it is a product of extreme SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS."
  p. 511: A quote from William Hazlitt: "If we are more catholic in our notions and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us in provision in the variety of books." This is exactly the sentiment that led me to name my lunch.com blog "The catholic reader."!
  p. 588: Das Capital is one of a class of (long, turgid, unreadable) books that "every intellectual thinks he has read."
  p. 689: "Nowadays, a sensible voter should call himself a Liberal Conservative Socialist, regardless of the election returns."
  
  With this final quote, Barzun has traced his finger close to our time on the map to a fork in the road he has called the Great Switch (caps by Barzun) which was triggered by the confluence of influences from the religious, monarchical, and individualist revolutions of the past 500 years, and the failure of religion, politics, economics, science, art, literature, and music to resolve or synthesize these influences into a workable pattern to live. This failure is represented by the traumatic events leading to and culminating in the Great War of 1914-1918, which was surprising in its near-unanimous support by the intellectual and cultural leaders of the time (p. 700-703). I have long found the period between the end of the American Civil War and 1914 the most fertile, fervent, and fascinating period of history, and Barzun's map reveals why in the detailed landscape of this period.
  
  If you can afford the time to read only one map to your world, make it this one. It is a rare work of profundity and fun, depth and clarity, that needs to be read and rewards the reading.
• 
  Vagabond of Letters, DLitt

  9.75/10
• 
  Eric Morse

  This Book Is 13,680 Pages Long.
  
  After having read Jacques Barzun's summa fifteen times, I have concluded that this book is not really 912 pages long as it appears in the product details, but rather 13,680 pages. Every time I read this masterpiece, I find new ideas and fresh material on every page. Seemingly, the book is an endless fount of intellect, culture, etiquette, morals, art, science, politics, and genius that serves as the capstone of the last era and the cornerstone for the next.
  
  The first thing to note about `From Dawn to Decadence' is that it is no ordinary history. It is a `cultural history' (Barzun is the preeminent scholar in that department), which means that you will not get a thorough account of the events and even personalities of the last 500 years.
  
  Culture is made up of the people in general, social trends, and the product of man, and so historical elements such as war and disaster, which are admittedly important to understanding our past, are not covered here. The author does investigate the lives of prominent people and of course explores the events, but does so only with regard to the `ideas' that have arisen in our era. With that focus, Barzun uses the historical pretext to uncover the kind of truths about life that can only be found in philosophical works.
  
  The ideas are summarized in the Part heads, whose style mirror the book's title. They take the reader `From Luther's Ninety-five Theses to Boyle's Invisible College'; `From the Bog and Sand of Versailles to the Tennis Court'; `From Faust, Part I, to "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2"'; and `From "the Great Illusion" to "Western Civ Has Got to Go"'. Through each transition, one can see how Western man grows and develops from a restless, nascent people to a mature, decadent culture.
  
  Do not read this book hoping to get a fresh reiteration of what we learn in modern media or even what we learn in school about what was important in our history, especially of the 20th century. You will be disappointed to find that the Great Depression and World War II are mentioned only in passing and Ernest Hemmingway and Jackson Pollack are not touted as amazing geniuses. Do not expect to read about Ayn Rand or the Beatles.
  
  These elements of our past that we believe to be so important in our lives are shown to be insignificant consequences of larger, more dominant historical forces. The people and events mentioned here are actually consequences of the historical force of Decadence, which, in a cultural history, is rightly demeaned. The reader realizes how insignificant the 20th century is after reading about the previous 400 years of cultural growth anyway. The people and events covered in first three parts are shown to be much more deserving of our attention and admiration.
  
  One must smile upon reflection--Erasmus, Petrarch, Montaigne, Bruno, Pascal, Cromwell, Diderot, Beddoes, Hazlitt, Bagehot, William James. The modern reader does not recognize half of the names that Barzun features, but realizes once he has read about them what kind of genius they offered and why it is important to learn about them and multiply their ideas.
  
  Attached to some of the names, but also quite independent elements in themselves, are the nine themes that this book presents: Emancipation, Primitivism, Reductivism, Analysis, Abstraction, Scientism, Secularism, Specialization, and Self-consciousness. Designated by all-caps, these themes appear throughout the story as currents that flow through the era's cultural stream, each introducing its own captivating idea worth significant attention.
  
  This technique and other innovations make `From Dawn to Decadence' a ground-breaking work in style as well as in content. Barzun employs reference tools (forward and backward-pointing page numbers, `the book to read is' recommendations, and unique formatting for section breaks) to accommodate study. He also institutes `add-ins', which function like the familiar `pull-outs', but offer the reader extra material in the form of "`the real self and voice' of the persons in the drama."
  
  Aside from the original techniques, the book stands out because of Barzun's literary genius, a talent that must rival the talent of all of history's great writers. It would be a challenge to find another work that expresses so many ideas and educates so thoroughly while constantly engaging and entertaining the audience as this masterpiece does. The book must be considered a new standard for cultural history and letters in general as well as a benchmark for all future cultural works. There simply is not a more rewarding book out there.
  
  Read this book once and your life will change forever. Read it a seventh time and you will vow to return to the book as often as possible. Read it a fifteenth time and you will agree that it is among the world's greatest cultural treasures.
• 
  Michael Canoeist

  The work of Jacques Barzun's lifetime -- how could a reader not profit from this summary of so much of what this scholar and thinker had studied in his generous span? [Editing in a good example of his take on a subject most are familiar with -- how we read, he says misread, Hamlet; see farther below...]
  Since he lived to 105, that makes for a lot of curiosity, thought, and learning. This summary of modern western civilization was published in 2000 when Barzun was 93, although it reads like the work of a man in his prime. He traces themes through these 500 years and will stimulate and provoke you on darned near every page. Can't do more justice than to quote his own purposes:
  
  "It takes only a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time. Believing this to be true, I have thought it the right moment to review in sequence the great achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium.
  
  "This undertaking has also given me a chance to describe at first hand for any interested posterity some aspects of present decadence that may have escaped notice, and to show how they relate to others generally acknowledged. But the lively and positive predominate: this book is for people who like to read about art and thought, manners, morals, and religion, and the social setting in which these activities have been and are taking place. I have assumed that such readers prefer discourse to be selective and critical rather than neutral and encyclopedic. And guessing further at their preferences, I have tried to write as I might speak, with only a touch of pedantry here and there to show that I understand modern tastes."
  
  The framework runs from Martin Luther to the internet. There are so many surprising things in here that its density is delightful. I have been reading it off and on for several years, and now that I am solidly past the halfway point, I wanted to get this little notice up here rather than wait another couple years when the treatment of the 20th century might, I fear, fatally discourage me. That may not sound like much of a recommendation but this is a tremendous book, as my rating and all the other reviews here must have made clear already.
  
  So, on Hamlet, from p. 254:
  The common notion of Hamlet is that he vacillates. In Olivier's film, the play is called "the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." That the play is first and foremost political is ignored. Everybody since Coleridge has concentrated on Hamlet's character and forgotten his situation. It is true that his character is finer than that of his entourage; he has a conscience and does not kill first and think afterward. Killing a king accepted by the populace is not a bagatelle. Laertes is the impetuous boy, put in to make the contrast clear. Hamlet has to think and watch, because from the outset he is in danger, a threat to the usurper and his aides; all conspire against him, including, though unwittingly, his betrothed. And he has his mother to consider. His soliloquies show him superior to his barbaric times, but what he thinks must not be taken for what he does. He wipes out the hired killers sent with him to England; he comes back resolved but wary and fails only by treachery.
  Two further facts reinforce the corrective view. Fortinbras says about Hamlet at his burial: he would have been a great king. This forecast would sound ridiculous if through five acts the hero had shown nothing but indecision. The other is the conclusion of a modern playwright that the text of Hamlet transposes scenes which, in a different order, would make the action go straight and fast. To appreciate the argument and the result, read Shakespeare's Game by William Gibson.
• 
  David

  How did we get to where we are today in Western culture? One of my favorite books of all time, A Secular Age by Charles Taylor, seeks to answer that question. Specifically, Taylor looks at how we moved from believing in God,mostly without question, in 1500 to having many options today. When I saw this book at the used bookstore, I was intrigued because of the topic (and the great deal!). But though Barzun covers the same period as Taylor, his book is quite different.
  
  As I read the book I perused some reviews and Barzun's Wikipedia page. Through that I learned he wrote this book in his 90s as his magnum opus! Near the end when he finally gets to WWI he writes from firsthand memory, which kind of nearly blew my mind. It was also amazing that he wrote this in his 90s for the book is filled with references to all sorts of people that casual students of history have never even heard of. He tells the story you may think you have heard before, but soon realize is vastly more complex then you knew.
  
  Though I was enjoying this book, I was not sure what to make of it. At first it seemed like what you would expect - beginning in 1500 the first figure discussed is Luther. But soon Barzun is discussing opera and poetry. It was not till I got to his chapter on the French Revolution that I finally realized the genuis of this book. Barzun discussed Napolean's invasion of Egypt, but his focus was not on the battles but on the thinkers Napolean took with and their work which has mostly been forgotten, influential as it was. If you want a history book that tells you history focused on political leaders and war, there are other books. Such books are probably a prerequisite for this one, as Barzun assumes a basic understanding of much of the actual historical events. This book is centered on culture - music and art and literature. Of course, philosophy and politics and economics appear too. But I learned more then I ever cared to know about the history of opera, for example.
  
  The final chapter, where Barzun discusses the present day (well, 1995) is worth the price of the book. We've reached decadence and it is not pleasant.
  
  Overall, highly recommended.
• 
  Brad Lyerla

  This is a wonderful book that could be written only by someone like Barzun and only near the end of a deeply distinguished career that spanned several decades.
  
  The scope of the book is breath-taking. And the learning necessary to write it is mind-boggling. The book is exactly what the sub-title suggests: an erudite discussion of 500 years of western cultural life.
  
  In particular, I love Barzun's definition of decadence: a state of affairs where futility and absurdity are accepted as normal. Barzun finds ample evidence of the acceptance of absurdity in 20th century literature, science, art, theatre and politics. Yet, the reader senses that Barzun himself believes that western culture has not lost its roots in rationality and pragmatism.
  
  For this reason, the book is optimistic. Indeed, Barzun's conversation with his reader repeatedly affirms that the the best of western culture is beautiful and rational even in the face of the uncertainty, incompleteness, alienation and relativity that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  
  By the way, though I read the first 200 pages or so sequentially, I found that for me the best way to read this unique book is to pick sections of interest and let my curiosity lead me.
• 
  Lauren Albert

  This was an excellent overview which turned into a diatribe against (what he sees as) the modern world. The last 20 pages or so are so odd that I was dizzy. Fraud as a substitute for artistic creativity (because everyone wants to be an artist, of course, and fraud is an apt substitute)? Terrible literary biographers actually "Interview surviving contemporaries." This is just a selection. I would say--read the whole thing until he gets to his vision of today (when he wrote the book). I knew he was conservative and in most of the book it is the kind of conservative one can live with. Then he turns into a raving conservative who pulls out random and extreme examples and uses them as "typical." Let's put this behind us. He was very old when he wrote this (a remarkable fact) and perhaps a bit cranky? It was otherwise an excellent book. Don't let that last 20 pages ruin the experience for you.
• 
  Gary Beauregard Bottomley

  It's good for me to read a book that takes me out of my comfort zone by reading a book like this one that mostly talks about the fine arts and written by a curmudgeon. If I had started reading this in the year 2000, I would have stopped, but today I found his obvious retrograde beliefs charmingly anachronistic.
  
  I hate to dwell on the author's obviously curmudgeonly ways since they really aren't the heart of the book. He writes a good survey of fine arts. In the beginning of the book he goes chronologically and thematically, but thankfully he starts to let the time period tell the story. People like me, really need to learn about literature, poetry, music all the things I've avoided my whole life. The author tells the emotional, passionate and intuitive story from the 1500s to 2000. He definitely favors Schopenhauer and his viewpoint on the meaning of art. (I suspect he spent more time on Schopenhauer than he did on Nietzsche).
  
  He's an expert at relating the modern thinkers to the time period he is considering. He really likes William James (as I do), and he relates him to many 16th century thinkers.
  
  The author spent about an hour and a half on Pascal and Louis XIV. I enjoyed the topic of Pascal's posthumous book, Pensee so much, I'll probably end up getting it even though Pascal's Wager is such a pathetic argument in itself.
  
  There's plenty to recommend in this book.
  
  He's not much of a scientist. He gets that part of the story wrong or incomplete. He will disparage 'scientism'. He defines it as the application of science to an area that is not appropriate. By definition, he makes scientism inappropriate when it's used outside of it's normal domain. He makes a big point that evolution by natural selection was worked out by others before Darwin. He said Newton's notation for the calculus is the notation that is currently in use. That's nonsense. These aren't big points with me, but they show me he's not much of a science historian.
  
  He said that "the Kaiser did everything in his power for Austria to avert war", and both sides are to blame for the great war. The Germans gave Austria a 'blank check', and ask a Belgium who started the war. He defends the Germans by saying Britain was planing on invading neutral Belgium anyways. Both sides are to blame. Blah, blah, blah! Read Max Hastings!
  
  I don't know why he said that the rulers who sent Columbus really didn't want to exterminate the native American people. That's a weird statement (probably true, but the Native Americans do get exterminated. Who cares about the good intentions). He tells me the Puritans really weren't puritanical, the Victorians weren't prudes and other such rubbish. Those things don't ruin the book and are just a small part of the book.
  
  He really should not have written the last one hour of the book. He didn't seem to like the fact that in 1999 New York State made it a civil right to breastfeed in public. (See, that's why I call him an anachronism. Nobody today will think twice about women breastfeeding in public). In the beginning of the book he'll say how he'll use man to represent both men and women. He'll tell us that 'actress' will always be used and so on. I don't think he's fully aware that Freud and his psychoanalysis mumbo jumbo had been completely over turned by the year 2000.
  
  Overall, ignore my nitpicking. They aren't the heart of the book, and his fine art heavy story is worth while.
  
  BTW, if any goodreads friend reads this review and would like my audio cd version of this book, just send me an email with your address and a promise to pay the shipping (probably $4), and I'll gladly mail the CDs to you. It was a pain in the ass to upload the CDs to my computer and then convert them to Iphone format, but it was worth it).
• 
  Rachel

  It's not often that one is sorry to finish a nearly 800-page book, or that the process of wending one's way through those 800 pages is so consistently engaging, enjoyable and even exciting. Being so thoroughly a product of this decadent era, I have to make an ironic comment: part of the reason this romp through 500 years of history was so enjoyable -- for me and I suspect for many of those who put it on the NYT bestseller list -- is because of a level of culture and education that renders only a few pages each on Erasmus, Marguerite of Navarre, Rabelais, Calvin, Goethe, Madame de Stael, the French Revolution, Art Deco, William James, and Surrealism (to give only a few examples) edifying rather than maddeningly superficial; Barzun's book perhaps only could have resonated with a "decadent" audience. But I think it's also because the book is genuinely insightful, reflective of the author's deep knowledge of the pretty astounding range of subjects covered, and persuasive in its articulation and interpretation of broad cultural trends and themes and their significance. Loved it and -- newly conscious of the depth of my ignorance -- have now added another 100 books or so to my "to read" list...
• 
  Paula

  Not the kind of book that you can't put down. I use this as my exercycle reading. That way I digest a little each day. This is not only a book about history, but a book about ideas. Barzun traces the intellectual history of Western Civilization since its "Dawn" with the birth of the printing press and consequent proliferation of ideas. I never pick it up without feeling that I've found insight into why things have played out the way they have, or at least confirmation of something I've suspected. Only occasionally do I disagree with the author's take on things. He is indisputably extremely well-read, and at times brilliant.
  
  
• 
  Craig Fiebig

  Critical review of 500 years of intellectual development and retreat. Skewers the isms and 'wings' with equal veracity, my preferred style. Excellent survey, likely best to read rather than to listen as the detail requires a bit of replay.
• 
  Dominique

  3.5 stars
• 
  Tso William

  This article reviews two masterpieces of intellectual history: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (by Jacques Barzun) and The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century (by Peter Watson)
  
  Reading intellectual history is like looking out at the window when the plane takes off. The colossal buildings become smaller and smaller until they are no more than little blocks of lego. It is then you realize how those distinct and individual blocks are connected through streets and roads, so that a coherent image of cityscape begins to emerge. Intellectual history is such a bird’s eye view of the whole intellectual landscape.
  
  A good work of intellectual history should narrate the development of ideas with acute observations and describe the landscape of ideas in a concise and understandable manner. The historian can not satisfy himself in detailing the concepts of an idea; otherwise it is simply encyclopedic. He can neither ignore the range of forces that propel the evolvements of ideas. Personalities, social changes, history and intellectual climate must be all taken into account. A historian walks along a tightrope. He must balance between purely writing encyclopedic entries of ideas and narrating an overly simplistic historical account.
  
  Two particular works stand out in these respects: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (by Jacques Barzun) and The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century (by Peter Watson). From Dawn to Decadence starts the story from the year 1500 – a defining year in the Western history. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signified the end of the rivalry between the Vatican Pope and Orthodox Patriarch. Columbus discovered America in 1492 and that marked the beginning of the end of the mediterranean politics in the Old World. In other words, Barzun’s work describes and narrates Western cultural life at periods that prospered and began to dominate the world.
  
  Watson’s Modern Mind begins where Barzun has thinly covered: 20th century. For me, the 20th century is particularly important for a very simple reason: it is the century that is most chronologically relevant, and whose ideas have the most immediate impact in our present time. Watson offered a more sophisticated reason. Unlike previous centuries, science in 20th century not only played the dominant role but other fields of inquiry, including anthropology, mathematics, history, genetics and linguistics, all came together to tell one coherent story about the natural world.
  
  Barzun followed a roughly chronological line with each part and chapter devoting to a particular cultural theme of the periods. The work is divided into four parts that started from Luther’s Ninety-five theses to ‘demotic’ life and times in our present age. A glance at the content will show chapter titles like ‘The Good Letters’ and ‘The Artist is Born’ for the Renaissance period and ‘The Reign of Etiquette’ and ‘The Encyclopedic Century’ for the Enlightenment age. The narrative story is expanded horizontally through different ‘cross-sections’ such as the views from Madrid and London around 1540 and 1715 respectively. These are intended to provide the flavor or the geist of the times.
  
  These parts, chapters and cross-sections are interspersed with loose and recurring remarks, like primitivism, boredom, abstraction, analysis, specialism, self-consciousness and emancipation. Superficially, these mark as the features of Western civilization but Barzun often used them for idiosyncratic observations. For example, boredom was primarily responsible for the shift of tastes while primitivism and emancipation embodied in notions like Protestantism and ‘Noble Savage’ ally with each to break the existing chains.
  
  Barzun’s approach to intellectual history is best described as deeply learned but provocative. He revealed his deep learning and willingness to disturb common notions when he argued that Leonardo da Vinci, though a genius in science and art, does not deserve the title of Renaissance man because, if we are to understand the Renaissance culture in its proper historical light, a Renaissance man must be also good at ‘good letters’ (poems and orations), sculpting, architecture and music – areas that Leonardo da Vinci did not necessarily excel. Such observation, among many others, shows characteristics of the Annales School as he seeks to bring forth the cultural and historical complexities behind ideas.
  
  However this approach can sometimes be pedantic and bring conservative conclusions. Barzun made much distinctions between utopia and eutopia and between democratic and demotic. Most pedantic of all is that ‘Bagehot’ in Walter Bagehot must be pronounced as ‘Badjet‘. Some observations are interesting but also conservative. He analyzed the word ‘man’ and argued, with Biblical references, linguistic Sanskrit roots and historical facts, that it included both man and woman, so that by implication, the polemics of the feminists are not well-justified. Moreover he listed out distinguished women, such as Queen Elizabeth and Margaret of Navarre, as proof that women played a historical role not less prominent than men.
  
  Barzun can often explain cultural ideas in clear and lucid manner but he showed a tendency to write highly dense prose that suggests his relative inexpertise in certain areas. He can explain Romanticism and clearly distinguish realism from naturalism. However in music, he vaguely described polyphony and harmony and then mixed in some jargons that suggested paraphrasing from secondary works. Very often, he crammed so much references in a single sentence that they are destined to be ignored or forgotten.
  
  Like a feng shui master, Barzun traced the flow of ideas in the last 500 years. In a more soldierly manner, Watson concentrated his fire on the 20th century – the century that most of us have lived through. Again, Watson followed a roughly chronological line that traced the rise of Freudianism in the early 20th century to Stephen Hawkins’ A Brief History of Time. He divided the story into four parts with numerous little digestible chapters that group ideas loosely into a theme. The four parts described four periods: before World War 1, inter-wars period, after World War 2, and from 1970s onward. Like whirlwind, he covered a wide range of topics in each chapter, encompassing music, arts, literature, mathematics, philosophy, particle/atomic/astro- physics, genetic/evolutionary biology, chemistry, cosmology, political theories, economics, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, historiography and whatnot.
  
  The breath of knowledge that Watson displays is immense, and this bring outs some relationship between ideas that I have never thought of. I did not realize that Wittgenstein’s philosophy is related to Skinner’s psychology insofar that they were committed to the positivist trend. Neither did I realize that Cubism was, in some measures, a response to the distorted reality as revealed by the dramatic discovery of subatomic particles in physics. Only an aerial view of the flows of idea could show such connections.
  
  Nevertheless, not all those connections are reasonable. Sometimes Watson grouped ideas too loosely and made some superficial connections. In the chapter ‘Cold Comfort’, for example, he believed that he already made a theme by repeating the chapter title, ‘cold comfort’, several times. In ‘Local Knowledge’, he introduced the views of several philosophers relating to the relationship between science and philosophy but his comparisons among the views constitute several vague remarks in the beginning of the sentences.
  
  The problem is that Watson packed his prose with too much information. Even in the concluding chapter, Watson continued to stuff in with information. I occasionally felt information overload. As a result, there is little space left for Watson to step back and see the overall picture. He did identify science, free-market economics, and mass media as the driving forces, but the actual interactions among them were less clear as he was busy outlining the details of the ideas for the bulk of the story.
  
  Nevertheless, he relaxed his pace by occasionally narrating anecdotes. He recounted the rivalries between scientists, especially the space race in the Cold War, and, in one instance, narrated the love story between Heiddeger and Arendt. These made the information much more memorable than the sometimes crammed sentences in Barzun’s work.
  
  One inadequacy is Watson’s excessive reliance on secondary works. Reliance per se is necessary and desirable because no one can be expertise in everything. However he sometimes ‘pillages, précised and paraphrased shamelessly’ (his own words) by not rendering the difficult ideas into more understandable forms. His entry on the origin of life account by Cairns-Smith is so layered with scientific jargons that it suggested he simply copied and pasted the key words from another author. His account on antibiotics is similarly obscure and difficult to understand. Without doubts he can write clearly, but he also needs to digest the ideas.
  
  Overall, Barzun and Watson show different tendencies. Barzun excelled his job at narrating intellectual history with some over-arching themes in his mind, but he is occasionally inept at outlining concepts in an understandable or meaningful manner. Watson tended to write in an encyclopedic manner but his concise chapters, mostly coherent and thematic, saved him from being unduly pedantic.
  
  One common pitfall is that none of them can be an expertise at every fields. This is not their faults. It is rather the constraints of writing an ambitious volume all by themselves. There is a tradeoff between a single-author volume with a guiding vision or a multi-authors volume with a less focused theme. Both Barzun and Watson consulted secondary sources to overcome their relative inexpertise, but as we have seen, the result is sometimes less than satisfactory. Perhaps a solution is to have a framework set out by a guiding editor with details filled in by specialists.
  
  These criticisms should in no way undermine the grand projects that both Barzun and Watson have accomplished. It is easier to point the finger at something to criticize than to construct anything. Both Barzun and Watson painted a panoramic picture of the Western civilization that few can parallel. Now that we have seen the historical flow of ideas, it is time to see the philosophical flow in Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy.
  
  From:
  http://1989nineteeneightynine.wordpre...
• 
  Pieter

  "There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed – it would have been better than nothing. (…) Vigour, energy, vitality: all the great civilisations – or civilising epochs – have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid. So if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted.” Dit citaat komt uit zowat het beste werk dat ik ooit las rond cultuur en beschaving: "Civilisation" van Kenneth Clark. De TV-serie oogt wat vergeeld na enkele decennia maar staat inhoudelijk nog als een blok. In tegenstelling tot de zielige poging van de BBC om deze als "Civilisations" te actualiseren. De these dat een decadente beschaving zich kenmerkt door verveling en vermoeidheid wordt gedeeld door dr. Jacques Barzun. De uitgever van de Nederlandstalige vertaling koos als titel 'Van de wieg tot volwassenheid'. Zelden gezien hoe de vertaling van een titel de kern van de these zo verkeerdelijk weergeeft. Barzun wil in zijn boek de evolutie van 500 jaar Westerse cultuur weergeven en koos daarvoor als titel "From dawn to decadence". Hij schetst daarmee het proces van emancipatie en primitivisme (d.i. het zich ontdoen van complexe cultuur (cf. Rousseau, hippiebeweging)). De eerder vermelde verveling en decadentie zorgen tevens ervoor dat men op zoek gaat naar alternatieve culturen zoals meditatie of de Moon-beweging.
  
  Om het boek wat te structureren, bakent de Schrijver vier periodes af van revolutie: de religieuze (1500-1660), de politieke (1660-1789), de sociaal-economische (1789-1920) en als laatste de 20e eeuw. Rond 1500 was de Westerse cultuur katholiek. Dit in tegenstelling tot Oost-Europa dat ofwel orthodox of islamitisch was. Meer dan nu beheerste het geloof het dagelijkse leven en de kijk op kunst, het debat rond vrije mening. Traditioneel wordt verwezen naar de boekdrukkunst om het begin van het schisma te bepalen. Maar de massale publicatie van de Bijbel werd ook geholpen door beter papier en inkt en de prachtige illustraties van Dürer en Cranach. Het nadeel was dat niet alles wat gepubliceerd werd, noodzakelijkerwijs waar was (niets niets onder de zon, cf. 'fake news'). Daarnaast waren er nog andere sentimenten die het protestantisme hielpen: de nationale trots versus Rome, de decadentie van de Kerk en het feit dat de Bijbel in de volkstaal werd verspreid. En uiteraard het feit dat vele Duitse prinsen de kans grepen om een onafhankelijke koers te varen. Velen waren zich echter bewust van de ernstige politieke gevolgen van een groeiende religieuze verdeeldheid. Keizer Karel dacht aan de Turkse dreiging en veel verzoeningsgezinden vreesden het groeiende individualisme. Erasmus streefde naar hervormingen binnen de Kerk zelf en vreesde terecht dat omwille van het protestantisme kritiek op de Kerk moeilijker aanvaard zou worden door katholieken. Barzun wijst op de verschillen binnen het protestantisme. Met Luther had men een voorman die belang hechtte aan muziek en humor, terwijl Calvijn een strenge leer voorstond die vele vroege critici van de Kerk deed verstommen.
  
  Tegelijk kreeg met het humanisme van Petrarca en Erasmus de (klassieke) mens meer aandacht. Nieuwe technieken zorgden voor architecturale vernieuwing: gotiek in Noord-Europa, klassieke vormen in Italië. Het perspectief en olieverf zorgden ook in de schilderkunst voor een nieuw tijdperk. Ook de onderwerpen en figuren waren meer seculier. De kunstenaar kwam prominenter in beeld, soms letterlijk vanachter zijn ezel vandaan om zelf te figureren of tenminste zijn werk te signeren. Het is vanaf die periode dat we namen van kunstenaars beginnen te onthouden: Ghiberti, Alberti, Vasari. Het was nog te vroeg om te spreken over politieke ideologieën, maar onder andere More, Bacon en Campanella waagden zich aan het beschrijven van hun utopia. De schrijver maakt de interessante opmerking dat in de ideale samenleving volgens eerder vermelde auteurs er slavernij zou bestaan evenals vormen van eugenetica. De mens is in deze vormen van utopia maakbaar, gelijk en ontdaan van ondeugden zoals jaloezie, luiheid en… humor. Barzun ziet erin de tendens om de mens te reduceren. Het geocentrisme van Copernicus degradeerde de mens tot dit tranendal, Darwin maakte het tot een nazaat van de aap en Freud maakte het tot een vat vol instincten.
  
  Over de ontwikkeling van de wetenschap bestaan heel wat misvattingen. Het is niet correct dat ten tijde van de Middeleeuwen de wetenschap stilstond of dat de Renaissance simpelweg voortbouwde op de klassieke kennis. Zo diende Copernicus antieke wijsheden overboord te gooien. Anderzijds bleef ook tot ver in de moderne tijd het bijgeloof sterk. Pascal was nog van oordeel dat het hart zijn redenen heeft die het verstand niet kent en ook Liebniz zag geest en materie in evenwicht. Maar Descartes sloeg radicaal de weg in van de rede ("cogito ergo sum"). Geest en materie werden opgedeeld. La Mettrie zou zelfs de meest radicale stelling poneren dat de mens een machine was en het denken materie. De eeuwig terugkerende discussie tussen idee en materie dateert al vanaf de tijd van Plato en Aristoteles. De heidens Griekse filosofie heeft in die zin een veel nadrukkelijkere stempel nagelaten op het Westerse denken. Vandaar dat Barzun oppert om eerder te spreken van een heidens-christelijke, eerder dan een joods-christelijke beschaving.
  
  Uit de ijver naar abstractie en analyse leefden wel het recht en de exacte wetenschappen zoals wiskunde op. De 16e en 17e eeuw waren gouden eeuwen voor de fysica en astronomie (Kepler, Copernicus, Galilei), geneeskunde (met Vesalius die het lichaam als een machine zag), chemie (gassen) en wiskunde (kansberekening, algebra).
  
  Met de politieke revolutie (midden 17e eeuw) ontstond de meer absolute monarchie en de natiestaat (Groot-Brittannië, Zweden, Frankrijk) ten nadele van de feodale adel. Sinds de 12e eeuw vormde de bourgeoisie daarbij een bondgenoot voor de koning in zijn ijver naar centralisatie. Een gevolg was dat geld land verving als teken van rijkdom met allerhande speculatie als gevolg, gaande van tulpen tot John Law. Voor Jean Bodin was de monarchie het bindmiddel van de staat om haar tegenstellingen te overspannen. Macchiavelli opperde dan weer dat de staat amoreel was ('raison d'état). De sterke figuur van Lodewijk XIV was een reactie op de godsdienstige verdeeldheid met Hugenoten en jansenisten. Pas in de 19e eeuw zou Frankrijk geleidelijk erin slagen om het lappendeken van regio's en talen min of meer tot een natie te smeden. Allerhande Verlichte denkers zouden nadenken over hoe het politieke leven diende gestructureerd. Hobbes en Locke ontwikkelden het sociaal contract, terwijl Montesquieu de scheiding der machten introduceerde. Vooral in de VS zou dit principe worden uitgewerkt en verankerd. Onze eigen Jozef II bewees dat Verlichting geen synoniem was voor democratie.
  
  De te nadrukkelijke focus op de rede wekte reactie op. Vaak wordt daarbij gekeken naar Rousseau als grondlegger van dit verzet. In tegenstelling tot de verlichte Voltaire zag hij de vrije boer als ideaal. Ook hij geloofde in het sociaal contract tussen burger en staat, maar enkel omdat de staat hem veiligheid kan geven. De staat moet wel verantwoording afleggen, consensus nastreven en legitiem zijn ("volonté générale"). Aandacht voor emotie, traditie (neogotiek (Pugin- Schinkel - Viollet-le-Duc)), natuur (Friedrich), passie (Goethe's Werther), nationale identiteit (Walter Scott en Grimm in de literatuur, Liszt in de muziek), oriëntalisme (Ingres, Lord Byron) en verbeelding traden op de voorgrond. De rebel-outsider werd plots sympathiek (Weathering Heights, Der Räuber). Vooral in Duitsland uitte de Romantiek zich in meerdere kunstvormen, het zogenaamde Sturm und Drang. Onder het Duits idealisme zou het werk van Shakespeare ook mogen rekenen op hernieuwde aandacht. Daarbij ontpopte Weimar zich als cultureel centrum van Goethe tot Wagner. Met Dickens, Zola en Stendhal kreeg ook het sociale onder de naturalistische kunststroming meer aandacht. De burgermaatschappij met haar moraal en vooruitgangsgeloof kwam ook via het estheticisme (Oscar Wilde, Arts & Craft, art nouveau) en symbolisme (oa Mallarmé) onder druk te staan. In het impressionisme zorgde de optische vervloeiing voor een subjectieve kijk van de kunstenaar. De verschillende kunststromingen zouden alsmaar wilder en breder meanderen, terwijl de samenleving in het teken van ontvoogding stond: anarchisme door het verwerpen van de machtsorganen, vrouwenemancipatie. Residuele kunst zou het herkenbare elimineren, kubisme toont atomen en geometrische constructies zonder harmonie in plaats van materie. Men portretteert niet meer het particuliere, maar de anonieme massa.
  
  De Eerste Wereldoorlog heeft uiteraard een impact op de kunst. De creatieve energie die eerst frivool leek, ontpopte zich tot een zelfvernietigende kracht. Een statische oorlog met nieuwe wapens die ook kunstenaars onder de nationale vlag naar het slagveld joeg waardoor de verdeeldheid ook in de kunst zichtbaar werd (Kultur vs Zivilisation). Net zoals op het slagveld kwamen de kunstenaars in 1918 gehavend uit de strijd. Het modernisme herleidde kunst tot maatschappijkritisch tijdsverdrijf. Het moest zintuiglijk eenvoudig zijn, decadent en liefst spotten met het verleden. Kunst werd antikunst. The "roaring twenties" gingen gepaard met frivoliteit en seksuele emancipatie. Maar er is ook het dadaïsme en surrealisme dat de waanzin van de samenleving voor ogen wil houden. De kunstenaar is de nar geworden die echter de toeschouwer minacht. Kunst is beland op een doodlopende weg. Ze is reductionistisch in plaats van expansief.
  
  Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog herleefde de economie snel. De vele uitvindingen en wedijver stuwden de welvaart naar nooit geziene toppen. Maar de filosofie is pessimistisch. Het existentialisme beweert dat de mens geen doel heeft in het leven in een afstandelijke natuur. Grondlegger Kierkegaard sprak van het absurde. Maar Sartre koppelde het existentialisme aan het marxisme waardoor hij de geschiedenis determineerde. In de keuze van Dostojevski's groot-inquisiteur koos de 20e eeuwse mens voor vrijheid boven zekerheid. Het werd verboden te verbieden. Een industrie van allerhande rechten ontwikkelde zich. Tegelijk ontstond in het onderwijs een afkeer voor hard werken en kalfde de lerarenopleiding af. Demotische tijden leiden tot verwaarloosde kledij (het vaarwel van pak en das), het overboord gooien van beleefdheid voor vrouwen en ouderen. Allerlei gezinsvormen worden gepromoot los van enige moraal. Het olympisch ideaal van sportiviteit en een gezonde levensstijl is herleid tot competitiviteit en bij gevolg ook corruptie. De natiestaat die het verdeelde feodalisme verenigde rond een gemeenschappelijke taal en cultuur en onderwijs, sociale zekerheid en een rechtsstaat wist uit te bouwen, wordt ondergraven door separatisme, dialecten, immigratie en chaos.
  
  Aan het einde van het boek kijkt Barzun naar de toekomst. In tegenstelling tot Fukuyama, gelooft hij niet in het einde van de geschiedenis. Hij gelooft wel dat er een sociaal-economische breuklijn zal komen tussen diegenen die de moderne technologie kunnen gebruiken (cybernetici) en diegenen die zullen veroordeeld zijn tot werkloosheid of goedkope jobs. De eersten zullen de nieuwe elite vormen. Ook waarschuwde hij al midden jaren 90 voor een groeiende controle op Internet. De bevolking zou dit alles gelaten en gezagstrouw ondergaan, zowel in Brussel als Washington. Profetische woorden die een kwarteeuw gedaan zijn en zich nu lijken te manifesteren.
  
  De man werd geboren in 1907, rondde dit werk af op 88-jarige leeftijd en stierf op 105-jarige leeftijd. Men kan enkel bewondering hebben voor iemand die zijn leven lang heeft gelezen, geanalyseerd en gepubliceerd . Zo lijkt hij één van de meest geschikte personen om de 20e eeuw te doorgronden. Biedt de 21e eeuw ons verdere afkalving? Barzun hoopt op een generatie getalenteerde jongeren die in de geest van Beda en Aquino de oude teksten terug onderzoekt en hieruit inspiratie haalt. Niet om een leven vol amusement na te streven, maar wel een vol-waardig leven. Om met de woorden van Voltaire de bocht weg van decadentie te nemen, zijnde "het gemak waarmee kunstwerken werden gemaakt en de luiheid waarmee dat gebeurde, door de overdaad aan beeldende kunst en de liefde voor het bizarre."
• 
  Clif

  From Dawn to Decadence is the masterwork of an accomplished author whose cultural knowledge is both broad and deep. Moving from 1500 to 1995, Barzun takes the reader by the hand directing attention to both well and little known people and the activities that characterized the most recent centuries of Western civilization.
  
  Barzun identifies themes that connect one period to another, making them stand out with capitalization. EMANCIPATION, INDIVIDUALISM, PRIMITIVISM and ABSTRACTION are four. These hold the 800 page work together in what otherwise could be a confusing amount of information. I admit that there were times when I was lost in the detail he provides. His love of the arts and the written word is evident as is the fact that he has read and can compare many of history's great works. When I think of the state of education in the United States at present, while knowing that I am ignorant of many of the things Barzun mentions, I wonder where the audience for this book is (will be) and what will happen to the history that to Barzun is so fascinating but to most people is completely unknown.
  
  When Barzun speaks of decadence, he means the loss of vision, of the eagerness to discover that carried Western culture through the centuries. Life is not taken seriously. Instead of looking forward with wonder to what may come next, there is anxiety, a lack of foundation and a restless insecurity about what we know will come next - our jobs lost to robots, for example. It seems everything has been tried before in the arts, so technique in and of itself is pursued. Culture churns rather than advances. "reality" shows are laughably contrived. Standards are suspect. The claim is made that the reader of a book is just as qualified as the author to state the meaning of the text. Nothing is sacred (religious or otherwise). Progress, except in technology, is seriously in doubt. The exciting drive to open up the new that began with the Renaissance has played out with glorious man now transformed into many individuals wanting the world to go away, to find the shelter that Mick Jagger sang about. The book could well have been titled "From Anticipation to Anxiety". Freud and psychoanalysis are not left out.
  
  Intellectuals will love the book, but the average reader will go to sleep. If you have been to the opera and the ballet, have attended orchestra concerts, have a collection of classical music and enjoy reading classic literature then you will be delighted at the evaluations Barzun provides as well as his telling of how these things came to be as you know them. If not, you'll be lost. Almost everyone can follow his account of the 20th century simply because there is enough common knowledge and known figures to which the average reader can relate, but earlier parts of the book will strike many as something only professors could enjoy. The author has tried hard to open things up to all but he can't escape what he is, the highly educated aesthete, that most are not.
  
  Be warned, Barzun makes recommendations of sources to read, noted where appropriate in his text. You may, like me, end up with many more books to read after finishing this one.
  
  
• 
  Jamie Smith

  This is a magisterial work of history, an extended tour of the key cultural events of the past five hundred years. It is astonishing in its depth and insight, the kind of book that can change a reader’s views about the developments that led to the modern world. Barzun’s key thesis is summed up in the very first paragraph of the book, “It takes only a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time.” What he sees as coming to an end is the impulse to continuously seek out and discover new lands, new ideas, new music, art, and culture. In its place is ironical detachment, a sense of futility about life and a belief that all notions of progress, development, and enhancement are fundamentally absurd and meaningless. He arrives at this idea by tracing cultural antecedents across the centuries, showing how one milestone built upon another until, somewhere in the late nineteenth century, it all started to run out of steam.
  
  As an example, painting developed a technically brilliant near photo-realism that was impressive but lifeless, and just repeated the same classical tropes over and over. Impressionism provided a bold and innovative new approach, but it exhausted its ideas within a few decades. Cubism held some promise, but it soon devolved into abstraction and irony, so that by the 60s things like a painting of a soup can could be considered a masterpiece. And now what works from the past half century can anyone even remember, much less assign a style or substance to?
  
  Music too bled away from romanticism to modernism to attempts to toss aside all previous conceptions of what music should be, to an embrace of cacophony which was called art. Like painting, music’s ideas have fizzled out, and those who make their living creating it today do so by aping the styles of previous centuries.
  
  If the present really is decadent, getting here was a wild ride, and Barzun is a wonderful guide to the highlights along the way. He is brilliant at recreating the nuances and import of social and cultural trends, from the Reformation through the Age of Kings to the Enlightenment and French Revolution, to Romanticism and finally Modernism. Along the way the reader meets most of the great minds of their times and is shown the complex interactions that led to their new ways of seeing the world. Barzun presents his own opinions and perspectives rather than attempting a strict objectivity, but he is so learned, so well versed in Western culture, that it is hard to argue with him for the most part. One area where he is not as good is his understanding of the sciences, where some of his pronouncements are off base and show a misunderstanding of the ideas and processes at work.
  
  It is hard to speak too highly of this book. This is big-picture history in the grand sense, tracing the key ideas that led to the modern world. It is interesting, informative, and very well written. This is the kind of book that you keep recommending to friends as a must-read. It is worth your time.
• 
  Josh Friedlander

  An enjoyable and opinionated stroll through 500 years of Western Civ, very much reminiscent of Will and Ariel Durant - with both their strengths and weaknesses. (They may have overlapped: Durant was an "instructor" at Columbia University sometime after receiving his doctorate in 1917; Barzun was the 1927 valedictorian and remained affiliated for life.) Barzun has an encyclopedic knowledge of his field and firm opinions on most subjects. Frequently he will reject a commonplace idea or an artistic judgment, or submit an artist as criminally underappreciated. (Finley Peter Dunne's Mr Dooley, anyone?)
  
  Barzun seamlessly blends changes in the artistic and cultural world over time, jumping back and forth and combining threads so that one doesn't notice the jump between centuries and eras. He also keeps the reader's attention with sidebar quotes (often from surprising sources) and has a stream of catchphrases (the book to read is X; his name? Y). Like the Durants, he clings to an ideal now abandoned in academia, that it is possible to have a bird's-eye view of everything: the objectively correct take on Nietzsche, Yeats, Proust, Kierkegaard, Dadaism, jazz, and on and on, thus to explain these things once and for all to an open-minded reader of average education. Such a tendency stretches into the final section where the author pours scorn on the contemporary scene with the same detached and omniscient tone, seeing in everything from progressive education to ripped jeans to political correctness to the Internet the signs of a decadent culture unmoored from moral and artistic bearings.
  
  A word about that term decadence. In
  an excerpt from his new book on the topic, Ross Douthat cites Barzun's assertion at the beginning of this book that "the term is not a slur. It is a technical label" referring to economic stagnation, institutional decay and intellectual exhaustion in the midst of prosperity. But the final forty-odd pages of this book (written at the astonishing age of 93) are a harangue against all that is modern. While willing to grant that Western society may lack dynamism, may be saturated with an existentialist nihilism preventing it from progress, there is at very least a counterargument to be made, one which a younger author may have been more receptive to. Has new music ever been created more quickly and with wider range than today, with YouTube and Soundcloud as distribution platforms? Has scientific progress ever been marshaled and distributed to fight pandemics or
  solve problems in number theory more rapidly? Naturally Barzun, with his decades leading the Common Core program at Columbia, should be heard out and taken seriously. But us reading and thinking about the world in 2020 also ought not to adopt his criticisms unthinkingly.
• 
  Kenny Lawrence

  - An age (a shorter span within an era) is unified by one or two pressing needs, not by the proposed remedies, which are many and thus divide.
  - A movement in thought or art produces its best work during the uphill fight to oust the enemy; that is, the previous thought or art. Victory brings on imitation and ultimately Boredom.
  - "An Age of --" (fill in: Reason, Faith, Science, Absolutism, Democracy, Anxiety, Communication) is always a misnomer because insufficient, except perhaps "An Age of Troubles," which fits every age in varying degrees.
  - All historical labels are nicknames--Puritan, GOthic, Rationalist, Romantic, Symbolist, Expressionist, Modernist,--and therefore falsify. But “renaming more accurately” would be effort wasted. Coming from diverse minds, it would reintroduce confusion. All names given by history must be accepted and opened up, not defined in one sentence or divided into sub-species.
  - The historian does not isolate causes, which defy sorting out even in the natural world; he describes conditions that he judges relevant, adding occasionally an estimate of their relevant strength.
  - Neither of these propositions is true by itself: “Ideas are the product of society.” “Social change is the product of ideas.”
  -The denial just stated applies also to heredity and environment; great men and the masses of mankind; economic forces and conscious purpose; and any other pair of commonly invoked coordinate factors. The exact course of their respective action cannot be understood and consequently cannot be stated.
  - A class is not a homogenous group of people marching in step but a sort of labeled platform populated by a continuous stream of individuals coming from above and from below. Once settled, they acquire the common traits.
  - The potent writings that helped to reshape minds and institutions in the West have done so through a formula or two, not always consistent with the text. Partisans and scholars start to read the book with care after it has done its work.
  - In art, influence does take place and when strongest is least literal. When it is literal it must be called plagiarism and the fact should not be concealed by the eminence of the thief.
  - In biography, systematic explanation by unconscious motives defeats the purpose of portraying an individual character. It turns him or her into a case, which then belongs to one of the types in the literature of psychology.
  - Progress does occur from point to point along a given line for a given time. It does not occur along the whole cultural front, though it may appear to by throwing into shadow the resistant portion. The sciences are no exception.
• 
  Michael

  Frankly, having read this work, I'm a bit embarassed to be writing a review. In as much as the whole narrative leads one to an inescapable feeling of living in a totally fragmented, de-contextualized, and (to use the author's word) decadent, society; it seems rather self-indulgent to commit these words to the infinite void of cyberspace, where, as far as I will ever know, no one will read them, respond to them, or act upon them.
  Having said that, however, here are my thoughts:
  Barzun has done a masterful job of delineating the threads of Western culture, showing how they relate to earlier trends, and how each new development contributes to the present scene in which we are both subjects and witnesses. Along the way he demolishes fallacious labels and hoary myths which we in education have peddled to our students as revealed truths. It is, simply, a masterwork.
  Oddly, his conclusions parallel those reached, although, in Barzun's case, with less passion and more erudition, by Against the Machine. That book offered the opinion that, in the end, we would be left with the only person who we can truly be comfortable with, ourselves. From Dawn to Decadence explains in more depth how we came to occupy this place, and why, in the final analysis, we won't be very comfortable with ourselves either.
  Everybody should read it, most won't, and many of those few who do won't understand.
• 
  Ericka Clou

  I did not especially enjoy reading this which is why I initially gave up after 200 pages. But I hate quitting things, and this is one of my dad's books, so I persisted. It's definitely interesting the way he handles European culture of 500 years, which is too long a time period even for a book this long, but it was a good try.
  
  I initially was thinking 3 stars, but I bumped up my stars when I got to the end and read his summation of more modern history. I wonder how I would have viewed the previous 400-year summaries if I'd read the end first. It's a pretty good summary of life as we know it though it's pretty damning as well.
  
  Finally, another reason for bumping to 4 stars is that I intend to keep the book as a list of "people and things to read about next."
  
  Big demerit for spoiling the plots of many classical books on my to-read shelf! Almost enough to keep me to 3 stars, but I was feeling generous because I was so happy to be finished with this tome.