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: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Intellectural History of the West - A Brilliant Summary
Review: Jacques Barzun is a peerless scholar on the history of Western civilization. In the past I've read some of his books of essays and shorter works, but from Dawn to Decadence is a massive volume that summarizes cultural life in the West over the last half-millenium. Barzun is a witty, subtle writer of great intelligence who is at the same time very readable. He makes sound but often idiosyncratic judgments that illuminate the great characters of history. Because of his encyclopedic knowledge, Barzun has been compared to Gibbon, who wrote the magesterial Fall of the Roman Empire in the 1770s. This book will also be a classic that will be reprinted time and time again. I can only claim to have read sections of this impressive work, as I research various topics, but each page is full of intelligent insights.
Rating:
Summary: Barzun's Magnum Opus compares to Gibbon's treatise on Rome
Review: This was my introduction to this masterful thinker. I read a wide variety of non-fiction, including so-called "Intellectual" or "Social" History. Few works are comparable to Prof. Barzun's review of the ascent and decline of western culture. Gibbon's "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" comes first to mind. It was obviously influential in Barzun's personal history. Also, Daniel Boorstein's trilogy: "The Discoverers", "The Creators", and "The Seekers", individually or in toto, come to mind. In each of these Boorstein works, as with Barzun's "Dawn to Decadence", the fruits of one age are traced along often unlikely roots to a previous age. Sometimes, too, the vines of a given age bear disparate fruits.
The Beauty of this tome is not solely in the mastery of the subject matter. It is also not just the materful use of the language. Both of these are wonderful facets to this gem. What shines brightest is the flow of ideas and their impact on disparate areas of the culture; to see the pebble strike the pond and then to follow the ripples along their course. For example, the demonstration that our modern concepts of political democracy and personal freedoms can be traced directly to the Protestant Reformation. This alone was such an epiphany for me. I had never heard anyone trace this path in other works and, to my knowledge, no one else has freely done so since. This alone convinced me of Prof. Barzun's brilliance. I have since gathered and read almost everything that he has published. After all of these I am even more convinced of his unique genius.
I have recommended "From Dawn to Decadence" to few people whom I know or meet. Not because of anything lacking in the book. It is that this book will appeal to certain indivuals but will not be appreciated by the public at large. It is not for the casual reader; it is not an "easy read". It is "project reading". One must approach it with an open mind and, preferably, with the ability to schedule time to read. At 800 pages, none of which is mindless fluff, it takes time for even the most voracious reader.
If you favor "historical fiction" and rarely venture into the non-fiction aisles, then this book is not for you. If you love to learn and love to read, especially if you love to read for learning, then you should read this book. Consider it a "must read." It may change your world-view. I know that it changed mine.
Rating:
Summary: I wonder what will come next
Review: After a lifetime of study, travel, research and reading, Jacques Barzun sums up a history of the last 500 years of Western culture. It is, of course, a fascinating trip, from the awakening of Europe in the Renaissance to our wonderful and yet terrible times, with Internet, amazing advances in health and comfort sharing the world with loonies driving planes into buildings and stupid murderers blowing up schools filled with kids and teachers.
Along the way, Barzun discovers the main themes of Western culture during these past 500 years: emancipation, individualism, progress, material comfort, primitivism, abstraction, analysis and the unconditioned life. Imbedded is also the continual struggle, within the human soul, of the two opposing forces of security and freedom.
This book is cultural philosophy as it should be written: rigorous but at the same time accesible to the reader, with comprehensive indexes and notes at the end of the book, but without cumbersome and intruding footnotes or pedantry. It is a fascinating trip through the development of a way of being in the world. It has wonderful descriptions of what life was like at every stage of history, as the book concentrates not so much on what was happening in politics, war or the economy, but indirectly so, as it focuses on the common life of people and the trends in the arts and sciences.
Along the way, Barzun tells us briefly the stories of many persons, whether or not they are famous nowadays, who made significant contributions, for good and bad, to the current state of the world. He also tells us what books could give the reader a deeper understanding of the trend, situation or character he is analyzing at every moment, which is very useful. Barzun writes alwalys with a tongue in his cheek, with a subtle and acute sense of humor.
Finally, when he analyzes the present, Barzun wraps up his conclusion that the present culture is in its final moments. But beware, the book is not the disappointed lament of an old man in his final days. It is simply a devastating statement about how several forces, which blossomed in the XX Century but which come from trends set before, are destroying the core of Western culture. But he understands that the end of this culture will not necessarily mean the end of the world. Barzun trusts that the West will be able to reinvent itself in a new shape, pass through a period of transition and finally rediscover the many good traits developed in the West in these past 500 years. Not pessimistic nor openly optimistic, this great work of philosophy will surely stimulate in the reader an impulse to look deeper into the current trends of the world and how we got here. It is entertaining and utterly readable in spite of being that long, and the cast of characters is fabulous. Much recommended.
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
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