Barzun's book "From Dawn to Decadence" is pretty good. There's now a cottage industry of pundits talking about "decadence", but they are all just rehashing Barzun.
I credit that book with introducing me to William James, whose ideas and personality I immediately liked. The same was true for Barzun himself; he wrote a biography called A Stroll With William James that’s also quite good.
Great recommendation. I somehow managed to go from the House of Intellect to Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad to James Baldwin's Stranger in the Village over the last couple of hours.
Nice read. I find these personal recollections from close friends to be way more illuminating than mere biography. William Feaver's "lives of Lucian Freud" is also in this vein ;)
An influential predecessor to much of Barzun's cultural history was John Erskine's Moral Obligation to be Intelligent. It's a short read. But the quality of prose and clarity of argument is unrivaled!
