Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun , 1907-, American writer, educator, and historian, b. Créteil, France, grad. Columbia (B.A., 1927; Ph.D., 1932). Barzun moved to the United States in 1919. A student of law and history and one of the founders of the discipline of cultural history, he began teaching history at Columbia in 1928 and spent the remainder of his long and distinguished academic career there. Appointed professor in 1945, he became dean of the graduate faculties in 1955, and was (1958-67) dean of faculties and provost. He became professor emeritus in 1975. For nine decades Barzun has written and edited critical and historical studies, essays, and reviews on a wide variety of subjects. His books include Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (1937. rev. ed. 1965), Romanticism and the Modern Ego (1943, 2d rev. ed. retitled Classic, Romantic, and Modern, 1961), The Teacher in America (1945), Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1950), Darwin, Marx, Wagner (rev. 2d ed., 1958), The House of Intellect (1959), Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1964), The American University (1968), Berlioz and the Romantic Century (3d ed. 1969), The Use and Abuse of Art (1974), and Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991). His massive, sweeping, and critically acclaimed historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (2000), was a surprise bestseller.

Bibliography: See M. Murray, ed., A Jacques Barzun Reader (2002).

Barzun, Jacques (1907–), born in France, came to the U.S. (1919), received an A.B. and a Ph.D. from Columbia, where he taught history (1929–67) and was Dean of Faculties and Provost. His learned, gracefully written books include The French Race (1932); Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (1937); Romanticism and the Modern Ego (1943), a defense of romanticism and a view of man's potential nobility, revised and extended as Classic, Romantic, and Modern (1961); Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (1941); Teacher in America (1945), essays on U.S. education; Berlioz and the Romantic Century (2 vols., 1950); God's Country and Mine (1954), essays; Energies of Art: Studies of Authors, Classic and Modern (1956); Music in American Life (1956); The House of Intellect (1959), an astringent analysis of democratic intellectual life, particularly American; Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1964), a humanist's view of the overestimation of science; The American University (1968); The Use and Abuse of Art (1974); A Stroll With William James (1983); A Word or Two Before You Go— (1986), essays on fine English usage; and The Culture We Deserve (1989).