American culture is surely decadent. Its decay is palpable to any sensitive observer who reads the feuilleton section of the local newspaper or attends a university. But is our decadence terminal? Is our civilization on a collision course with extinction? The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun (200 pages, Wesleyan University Press, 1989) Politically America [...]
Our civilization has danced on the edge of the volcano for so many years now, recklessly testing its footing in ever more vulgar and precarious ways, defying the moral interdictions of the past and gradually losing a sense of its own fragility and vulnerability, that it is hard to imagine that we will survive our [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]