Review of From Dawn to Decadence

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.

Barzun makes frequent references to other works of historical scholarship, but unlike that other eminent French historian Fernand Braudel (who I also adore), he mostly eschews footnotes and endnotes. Instead, his references take the form of notes that simply state "The book to read on this topic is so-and-so". Barzun's ideal reader is one who wants to drink as deeply from the well of scholarship as he has.

I recommend this without reservations to anyone who loves history.