New Releases by Jacques Barzun

La obra cumbre del historiador Jacques Barzun es una magnífica síntesis de nuestra historia moderna: un apasionante recorrido de Occidente desde el Renacimiento y la Reforma hasta nuestros días. El historiador Jacques Barzun, reconocido internacionalmente por sus más de treinta obras sobre historia y crítica cultural, nos ofrece en una narración única la suma de sus descubrimientos y conclusiones sobre la cultura de Occidente desde el año 1500. Describe la forja del hombre occidental a partir del Renacimiento y la Reforma hasta el presente, bajo una doble luz: la de aquellos tiempos y la de nuestros intereses en los albores del siglo XXI. Los triunfos y derrotas ocurridos en esos quinientos años conforman una inspiradasaga que modifica la visión de este periodo como una época de opresión por parte de los hombres blancos europeos. Las mujeres y sus proezas son sobresalientes, y la libertad (incluso la sexual) no es un invento de las últimas décadas. Y cuando Barzun valora el presente como declive y no como culminación, no lo hace en absoluto como un profeta apocalíptico. Por el contrario, muestra que la decadencia es el cierre inevitable de las grandes épocas, condición necesaria para la creación de la novedad, que surgirá pronto, tal vez mañana. La crítica ha dicho : «Sin duda alguna, este libro sobrevivirá para deleitar y provocar a los lectores del siglo XXI; incluso asombrara a los del siglo XXII por su preclaridad.» The New York Times Book Review «Este libro pasará a la Historia... Supone el triunfo de la sabiduría sin ataduras.» Newsweek «¿Cuántasveces en la vida se encuentra uno frente a una obra maestra? Esta obra, sin ninguna duda, lo es.» National Review

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Additional Contributing Authors Include Archibald MacLeish, M. Bundy, R. F. Goheen, And Many Others.

Throughout his career Jacques Barzun, author of the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award Finalist From Dawn to Decadence, has always been known as a witty and graceful essayist, one who combines a depth of knowledge and a rare facility with words. Now Michael Murray has carefully selected eighty of Barzun''s most inventive, accomplished, and insightful essays, and compiled them in one impressive volume. With subjects ranging from history to baseball to crime novels, A Jacques Barzun Reader is a feast for any reader.

In this international bestseller, originally published in 1959, Jacques Barzun, acclaimed author of From Dawn to Decadence, takes on the whole intellectual -- or pseudo-intellectual -- world, attacking it for its betrayal of Intellect. "Intellect is despised and neglected," Barzun says, "yet intellectuals are well paid and riding high." He details this great betrayal in such areas as public administrations, communications, conversation and home life, education, business, and scholarship. In this edition''s new Preface, Jacques Barzun discussess the intense -- and controversial -- reaction the world had to The House of Intellect.

A fter a lifetime of writing and editing prose, Jacques Barzun has set down his view of the best ways to improve one''s style. His discussions of diction, syntax, tone, meaning, composition, and revision guide the reader through the technique of making the written word clear and agreeable to read. Exercises, model passages both literary and casual, and hundreds of amusing examples of usage gone wrong show how to choose the right path to self-expression in forceful and distinctive words.

When it was published in 1968, a year noted for historic student protests on campuses across the country, The American University spoke in Jacques Barzun''s characteristically wise and lucid voice about what colleges and universities were really meant to do—and how they actually worked. Drawing on a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishment as a teacher, administrator, and scholar, Barzun here describes the immense demands placed on the university by its competing constituencies—students, faculty, administrators, alumni, trustees, and the political world around it all. "American higher education is fortunate to have had a scholar and intellectual of Jacques Barzun''s stature give so many years of service to the daily bread-and-butter details of running a great university and then share his reflections with us in a literate, humane, and engaging book."—Charles Donovan, America

Criticizes the current educational system, and offers suggestions on curriculum, testing, grading, and teaching methods

In An Essay on French Verse-For Readers of English Poetry, Jacques Barzun addresses the baffling English prejudice against French poetry. Barzun''s many-faceted and entertaining study muses on six hundred years of French verse, its rules and forms and how they evolved. It also has significant sections on the French language itself, its sounds and difficulties; on verse music in language generally; on the character and achievements of the greatest French poets; and finally, on the social and political conditions that encouraged successive innovations, including the prevailing wordwide practice of free verse. The Essay, moreover, draws not only on a lifetime''s reading, but on personal reminiscences as well: of stuffy poetry lessons in the French lycée; of the poet Apollinaire expounding his views on language to amuse the child sitting on his knee; of the author''s great-grandmother telling him about proper French pronunciation, as it was in her youth, eighty years earlier. In sum, Barzun''s book goes a long way toward answering the question posed in 1917 by A. E. Housman to André Gide: How is it that every nation has produced poetry except France?

The essence of culture is interpenetration. From any part of it the searching eye will discover connections with another part seemingly remote. If from my descriptions the reader finds this wide-angled view sharpened or expanded, my purpose in publishing these pages will have been served.

An annotated list of more than five thousand books, including novels, short story collections, histories of the genre, true crime tales, and Sherlock Holmes studies

Walter Prescott Webb''s contributions to the study of history, detailing the direction historical studies have taken since Webb wrote. Webb''s historiography and its relationship to classroom instruction is the subject of the second essay, by Elliott West. An appreciation of Webb and a sense of his teaching style are offered by Anne M. Butler and Richard A. Baker, while Dennis Reinhartz discusses the use of maps in the classroom, a practice to which Webb was committed. In a postscript, Llerena Friend writes a personal tribute to her mentor and colleague.

This collection of writings allows the reader a rare opportunity to see Barzun''s lively, engaging, rich, and original mind at work on several strategic areas of cultural inquiry: music and the musical life, esthetics, biography, criticism, and social commentary. Barzun makes use of a variety of contexts as a forum for evidence and opinion, including essays, program notes, letters, and reviews. And he approaches a wide variety of particular and general questions. What is it like to sit in on a recording session with a great orchestra? What is the role of the piano in Western culture? What is art in relation to objective reality and to the perceiving mind? Can one translate music into words? What is cultural history? For anyone unfamiliar with Barzun''s work, Critical Questions will serve as a valuable introduction to one of the most important cultural historians of our time. Others will be glad to have these pieces—most of them no longer easily available—brought together in a single volume. Uniformly insightful, provocative, and a pleasure to read, they show the consistency of Barzun''s thought even as they exhibit diversity.

With this book, Jacques Barzun pays what he describes as an "intellectual debt" to William James-psychologist, philosopher, and, for Barzun, guide and mentor. Commenting on James''s life, thought, and legacy, Barzun leaves us with a wise and civilized distillation of the great thinker''s work.

"The essays in this collection are as diverse as Jacques Barzun''s interests: literature, history, music, teaching, criticism, drama, aesthetics, science. The book includes a personal memoir of his friend and colleague by Lionel Trilling (unfinished at Trilling''s death, it is printed here as he left it), two portraits of Jacques Barzun, and a bibliography of his writings that reflects the wealth and variety of his scholarship..." - Book jacket.

The spreading vogue of psycho-history and what the author has christened "quanto-history" raises fundamental questions of theory and practice about both history and the new methods applied to it. In this work Jacques Barzun presents his credo as a historian, criticizing the "new" techniques and contrasting them with his idea of the true spirit of historical inquiry. --Book jacket.

The lecturer traces the historical development of attitudes toward the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that the present is a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance.