Barzun, Jacques

Barzun, Jacques (zhäk bär`zən), 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. He was appointed professor in 1945, became dean of the graduate faculties in 1955, and was (1958–67) dean of faculties and provost. For eight decades Barzun has written and edited critical and historical studies on a wide variety of subjects. They include The Teacher in America (1945), Darwin, Marx, Wagner (rev. 2d ed., 1958), The House of Intellect (1959), Classic, Romantic, and Modern (2d rev. ed., 1961), Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1964), Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (rev. ed. 1965), 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).

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Barzun, Jacques (1907–  ) educator, cultural critic, writer; born in Créteil, France. Arriving in the U.S.A. in 1920, he did his undergraduate and graduate work at Columbia University (Ph.D. 1932). He joined the faculty of Columbia in 1927 and remained there as a professor of history and dean, taking emeritus status in 1967. A man of wide-ranging interests, his major professional areas were 19th-century European cultural history, music, and the history of ideas. His many published works, most aimed at a broader public than his professional colleagues, include Teacher in America (1945), Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1950), Music in American Life (1956), A Catalogue of Crime (1971), and Clio and the Doctors (1974). He served as a consultant or adviser on various publishing projects and was a firm, if sometimes cantankerous, upholder of traditional standards of language usage and educational approaches; he never hesitated to write a letter to the editor, an article, or a book attacking what he regarded as deplorable intellectual trends—not only within his own discipline of history but also in science, the arts, and the publishing world.