From Dawn to Decadence

At 84 years of age, Jacques Barzun began writing his swan song, to which he devoted the better part of the 1990s. The resulting book of more than 800 pages, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, reveals a vast erudition and brilliance undimmed by advanced age. Historians, literary critics, and popular reviewers all lauded From Dawn to Decadence as a sweeping and powerful survey of modern Western history, and it became a New York Times bestseller. The book introduces several novel typographic devices that aid an unusually rich system of cross-referencing and help keep many strands of thought in the book under organized control. Most pages feature a sidebar containing a pithy quotation--usually little known, and often surprising or humorous--from some author or historical figure. In 2007, as Barzun approached his hundredth birthday, he remained intellectually and physically active but relied upon "a cane or walker to get around," according to Arthur Krystal, who visited him in San Antonio and wrote an article about him for The New Yorker magazine. Barzun was fully "alert to the irony of aging," commenting from experience that "Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing."

First Edition
The first edition was printed in 2000 by HarperCollins.

Author's Note
"It takes only a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time.  Believing this to be true, I have thought it the right moment to review in sequence the great achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium."

Awards and Honors

 * National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (Criticism, 2000)
 * National Book Award finalist (Nonfiction, 2000)
 * New York Times bestseller (Nonfiction, 2000)