A solid spy thriller by a master of the genre. This is the second book I've read by Le Carre, the other being his famous The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Naturally, he knows his spy tradecraft, the details of which are used to great effect in portraying a competent protagonist drawn into events larger than himself, by no fault of his own.
Le Carre also deftly makes reveals that kept me turning pages til the end. As with Came in from the Cold, the ending happens suddenly and all at once. As in that other great spy thriller, The Day of the Jackal, the full strength of the protagonist's plan is kept secret from the reader till the very end, yet (also as in Jackal) it's all very logical: Le Carre doesn't cheat the reader by pulling things out of his rear end.
Barzun's magnum opus illustrates 500 years of European cultural history, with details focused primarily on the lives, works, and philosophies of key players great and small. He asserts in plain but erudite language what people thought and why they thought it, and how ideas and movements related to contemporary culture and influenced major events. His observations continually return to major themes, including individualism, self-consciousness, emancipation, analysis, reductivism and primitivism, which he uses to characterize change and continuity among works of art, social movements, and strains of thought. Interlude chapters step back from the personal perspectives to show what it was like to live in key cities during the time periods when they were most prominent on the world stage.
As strong as the famous train-and-car chase is, for my money it's too hectic to be this movie's best scene. I prefer the foot chase where Detective "Popeye" Doyle tries and fails to catch Charnier, the stately criminal mastermind. The cinematography and the actors' movements make it; the steadily increasing tension of the score clinches it.
