Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating read...
Review: Barzun is 94 years old and has written more than thirty books. His career as a historian has been an amazing one, and this book gives evidence of his vast experience. The time period covered (500 years) is certainly a broad one. But it is a magnificently rich one to study. I bought the book because I was interested in reading about Renaissance and Baroque art and wanted to get a broader sense of historical context. I got that and much more... politics, philosophy, religion, and more are discussed with reference to one another and with an amazing sense of cohesion.Barzun speaks with a truly historical perspective. He never fails to be thorough, insightful, probing, and penetrating in his analysis. His lucidity and clarity are amazing; as I said his vast experience as a historian is evident. He is always impartial, rendering a truly helpful take on whatever he adresses. His approaches are always fresh - he dispels common misconceptions and gives the reader a more accurate historical perspective. His sense of focus is remarkable. The book is 800 pages long, but it never loses a sense of the big picture it is painting. Barzun names a few common themes of change in the last 5 centuries and they become threads which reappear constantly in his narrative. None of his thoughtful observations go without context and relation to his overarching argument. The impact of events becomes clear through Barzun's careful analysis. His writing style is most enjoyable. He is quite casual without lacking anything in specificity. His prose is always engaging - it makes this massive work of cultural history a joy to read. Barzun's quickness to get to the heart of the matter and the ease with which he resolves historical questions are amazing and sometimes bring a smile to my face. His wit is a welcome addition to such an easy-to-read style. His sense of humor is subtle but piercing, accompanying perfectly his lucidity of thought. This book will not fail to please you, whatever historical interests you may have. It is so far-reaching (while still amazingly focused) that there is something here for everyone. Critical praise has been heaped on this book - it is, to me, one of the greatest and yet most approachable works of history to come along in a while. Most highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: Worth a second opinion
Review: I wasn't sure what to think while I was reading. But, I couldn't put this down. While reading, I thought Barzun crammed tightly so many ideas, events, details, and biographies that he verged on stimulus overload. Later, when remembering names or events that I encountered when watching TV or reading, I realized how much of the book is retainable. Barzun is a famous stylist. Given how much I admire his writing, I was at first disappointed in the prose. This is not to say that it's written poorly. Only that I think Barzun was more concerned with imparting information in a straightforward way. Nevertheless, certain passages still sing. I was also at first put off by the many biographies interspersed throughout the narrative. But, then again, after awhile I looked forward to them. They not only add information about famous persons, but color. Barzun believes certain ideas-individualism, primitivism, self-consciousness, etc-are singularly Western. He uses all capital letters to denote these ideas each time they appear in the narrative. At first, these bothered me because I thought they were trite. But, again, I realized that Barzun was attempting to remind readers of the consistency of Western thought. He demonstrates that so many modern or even post-modern theories, which claim to be avant-guard and even anti-Western, really have deep cultural roots in the very things they revile. This book is a challenge to those finding it fashionable to denounce Western Civilization. As Barzun says: "[T]he West offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier or elsewhere." We are rightly proud of them.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating journey through the past 500 years
Review: This book begins with the Protestant Reformation in 1517, and continues to the present day. Many times histories can be very dry and difficult to read, but this 877 page book covers 500 years of Western Cultural Life in a very readable manner. The focus is on all the facets of Western culture through the centuries. This book is about 500 years of art, politics, religion, writing, philosophy, science, morals, and manners. One of the things that makes the book so interesting is that not only are historical and cultural revolutions covered, but the part that people had in important events and their effects on real people are described. The importance of individual people is greatly stressed in the book. This book shows that we all have many connections with the past. The events of each century have effected what happened in the following centuries, and in our lives today. Jacques Barzun describes our current age as being decadent; but that sense of decadence is really the end of one age and a new beginning for the future. That new beginning can see another flowering of Western culture. This book is the work of a lifetime, and I always had that awareness while reading it. There is a vast richness in the depth and range of this book that any review can only briefly describe. Reading this book is like looking back through the footprints of time, and seeing many of the places that we came from. Then there is also a vision of the path that may lay before us in the future. I recommend this excellent book to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining while instructive
Review: I do not know how Jacques Barzun did it. He takes us through five hundred years of Western cultural history, lards the book with the most esoteric and complex information, and yet somehow manages to make this book a breathless "page-turner." His sure-footed erudition grounds him so securely that he can make forays into the outré, the weird, the seemingly trivial, and then come back to relate it to a baseline of solid historical narrative. One sees connections never noticed, or even imagined, before. One learns of important figures who somehow have avoided the glare of modern scrutiny. I had the feeling I was in the presence of the best college professor I could ever hope to have, and was never intimidated; I just didn't want to miss the next class. [Maybe that's because I knew there was no final exam!] One appreciates Barzun's decidedly conservative notion that old values matter. He gives political correctness a clop in the chops. He defends some currently dismissed figures like Columbus. And even though he is not terribly sanguine about current cultural trends, he is basically optimistic about the future. Oh, to have Professor Barzun and me sitting on the two ends of a log, talking, talking. Wait: that's what we have here. Lucky me. Lucky us.
Rating:
Summary: A History of the Past for the Present and the Future
Review: This is a marvelously entertaining and eye-opening "unpartisan review" of man's (men, women, teenagers) cultural achievements in the last 500 years in the West. Barzun shows us a vision of the past that is coherent, comprehensive, undulating, and various. His "poised-pen" portraits and felicitous quoting make recognizable dozens of thinkers and artists whose past acts give shape to what we think and feel today. His tips for further reading are a great reminder that, unlike science and techne, good history is never obsolete. Although Barzun considers the present a time of decadence, this, his greatest work, will give many of us heart as we create (humanly speaking) the unknown future.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, but history?
Review: This is a nice book but highly speculative and really just a good read rather than a great intellectual work. The ironic thing about this book is that it is made for the modern "decadent" mindset, interspersed with short chapters and spicy interludes to keep those with short attention spans from putting the book down.-Hence its popularity.- For a comparison, try reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and you'll get a sense of what a real work of history is like.-But the book is fun. I mean, it's very interesting to read about these obscure figures whom Barzun feels that history has neglected, and other obscurities and eccentricities which one cannot help but feel Barzun took an impish delight in including. -But, all in all, the book is more kitschy than "Great."-Barzun leapfrogs from period to period seemingly at will with little or no sense of continuity, the spelling and grammatical mistakes abound (as noted by other acute reviewers) and those little side notes are also ENTERTAINING but NOT history.-I kept on getting the feeling I was reading "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner."-Barzun is no fool. He is an erudite and cultured man, and shrewd. He knows what sells books in this "decadent" culture. He has succeeded in doing so with this one. This book is essentially bubblegum, anecdotal history. But there's nothing wrong with this type of narrative. It's just not the real thing, as so many of you reviewers seem to feel. Before you burn me at the stake, just take a look at Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Hume's History of England, or Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples to get an idea of what thorough, narrative history is all about. Then you can go ahead and burn me!-And as far as Barzun's ultimate verdict on our age as demotic, I think he's perfectly correct. But I think he should have stuck with "demotic" rather than "decadent" because, even in Barzun's work, the word has too many connotations.-What this demotic age signals (among a host of other things Barzun is not shy about elaborating, in terrible prose) is that "the demand for genius has died out." Barzun's work is evidence of this! History for pop culture has never been so perfectly exemplified! -But, as I said, the book is fun and innocuous until the absurd end where he plays the millenium card, and unoubtedly sells googles of more books
Rating:
Summary: Brings Dead White European Males back to Life!
Review: A most refreshing read in that Jacques Barzun, a ninety something scholar infuses much needed life into western culture.
The enthusiasm and care that he puts into making his impressive scholarship available to the less well read amongst us is admirable in itself. Even more admirable is his dedication to restoring integrity to the western canon considering what bad press it is getting these days from the academic left. Highly recommended! Jaye Beldo: Netnous@Aol.Com
Rating:
Summary: A Sweeping Interpretation of Western Culture
Review: Jacques Barzun's book "From Dawn to Decadence" is not a book for the casual reader who knows little of his past; there is simply too much to overwhelm the uninformed. The well read, on the other hand, may find it somewhat unsatisfying, at times, as Barzun covers so much ground that one continuously begs for more detail which rarely is forthcoming. That said, even the most knowledgable will find subjects of interest in this book, and Barzun's interpretation of the development and decline of Western culture is certainly worth understanding. Barzun takes what he believes are the essential features of Western life, i.e., emancupation, individualism, secularism, self-consciousness, analysis, the free market in ideas, the notion of progress, specialization and abstraction and shows how their development led to revolutionary charges and brilliance. Those who criticize Barzun for a "conservative" outlook would do well to remember that the author understands how positive the "revolutionary" changes in the West have been in many respects. These features of Western culture have led to achievements of the highest order. But, Barzun also comprehends the tendency for people to descend into "primitivism" and, when this is coupled with the extremes of secularization, self-consciousness, analysis, individualism, and specialization, the culture becomes decadent with its loss of vision and vitality. This has been clearly evident for half a century. All values and ideals, when carried to their logical extreme, negate themselves. Let us remember that the past fifty years or so has given us Andy Warhol, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others of that ilk. The signs of decadence are all around if you care to look. Barzun has examines the trends of Western cultural life for over 500 years and his analysis is to be respected and listened to. And, yes, we should be concerned.
Rating:
Summary: A unique survey of the highest caliber
Review: One of the first questions any reviewer consciously or subconsciously engages is whether or not they could do better than the author. I don't think anyone else on the planet could have written this book. I would venture to say that with the possible exception of Harold Bloom, there may be no one as erudite or as well-read in the canon of western civilization as M. Barzun.
Pick up this book, find a comfortable chair with a good light and a warm, cozy fire, and prepare to learn something when you delve into its pages. Authors, artists, patrons, thinkers, revolutionaries and reformers parade across these pages in a sometimes truly dizzying and disconcerting array. This is the kind of book that spends maybe two pages on Leonardo and a page on the obscure English critic Hazlitt. It's the kind of book that bolds its themes: EMANCIPATION, ABSTRACTION, PRIMITIVISM, etc. It's the kind of book that begins with Christopher Columbus and ends with a discussion of rap and quotes by Bill Murray.
There is no way anyone will agree with 100% of his assessments (he makes too many for that to be possible), but everyone of his comments will provoke thought and stimulate the reader. I loved his little apercus that he'd just toss out at the end of certain sections like little hand grenades.
My biggest quibble is that he gives short shrift to every cultural contribution, but he really gives short shrift to Spanish, Scandinavian, and eastern European literature -- most of the book revolves around the big 5: Germany, France, Italy, UK, and the US, with some lip service to Russia and a nod to Don Quixote and a couple of other Latins, but nevertheless this is an enormous contribution to cultural history.
This is an original work by an original man, and while it may have been physically written over the past few years, the mental writing of this book took a lifetime. Everyone with aspirations to culture should engage this book. You won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, limited.
Review: This is a wonderful book to read, but you shouldn't rely on it. Barzun concentrates on the cultural (and other) legacy of the countries he knows best. These are America, France and Britain. There is a lot of Germany, some Italy and bits and pieces of the rest of the "West". Nevertheless, it's worth reading for its innumerable little revelations. Barzun is an old fashioned conservative, almost a reactionary, but a happy one and quite agreeable. The book will work well in combination with different sources and material. Good knowledge of history is imperative.
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