Increasingly, the university becomes the servant of the public desires of the hour, and correspondingly neglects its old duty of waking the moral imagination and disciplining the liberal intellect… The American University: How It Runs, Where It Is Going by Jacques Barzun (356 pages, University of Chicago Press, 1993) As C.E.M. Joad put it, “decadence is [...]
The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia by Roger Kimball For those who cherish the life of the mind, one of the saddest events of 2012 was the death of the great historian Jacques Barzun. If a loss can be said to be pregnant with meaning, this one surely was. It [...]
In the annals of writing history, there are a handful of volumes that have become established as models due to tone, insightful content, and excellence of style. The most recent historical work by Jacques Barzun is such a work. It is a cultural history of the highest standard. As a historical volume of such scope, [...]
The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun. Politically America may have won the Cold War, but culturally she has entered the fin de siècle. Despair is chic among youth. Recently a television news hour reported that pop singers feel rather downbeat about America, their lyrics adding up to an endless tale of woe. High culture, too, [...]