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A fter a lifetime of writing and editing prose, Jacques Barzun has set down his view of the best ways to improve one's style. His discussions of diction, syntax, tone, meaning, composition, and revision guide the reader through the technique of making the written word clear and agreeable to read. Exercises, model passages both literary and casual, and hundreds of amusing examples of usage gone wrong show how to choose the right path to self-expression in forceful and distinctive words.
The essence of culture is interpenetration. From any part of it the searching eye will discover connections with another part seemingly remote. If from my descriptions the reader finds this wide-angled view sharpened or expanded, my purpose in publishing these pages will have been served.
From the celebrated cultural historian and bestselling author, a provocative history of the evolution of our ideas about art since the early nineteenth century In this witty, provocative, and learned book, acclaimed cultural historian and writer Jacques Barzun traces our changing attitudes to the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that we are living in a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance. He challenges our conceptions and misconceptions about art “in order to reach a conclusion about its value and its drawbacks for life at the present time.”
This is the story of the career and ideas of one of the twentieth-century's leading intellectuals. Jacques Barzun was the author of some thirty books of biography, history, and cultural criticism, among them the best-sellers "The House of Intellect," an indictment of governmental and foundation interference with the autonomy of scholars and universities, and "From Dawn to Decadence," an argument that the West was falling into decay and incapacity.
Throughout his career Jacques Barzun, author of more than thirty books, including most recently the New York Times bestseller From Dawn to Decadence, has always been known as a witty and graceful essayist, one who combines a depth of knowledge and a rare facility with words. In A Jacques Barzun Reader, Michael Murray has carefully selected from Barzun's oeuvre eighty of the most inventive, accomplished, and insightful essays, now available for the first time in one magisterial volume. The list of subjects covered has an amazing range: history, philosophy, literature, education, music -- and more. Here is Barzun's classic examination of baseball in American life, Lincoln as a literary artist, and the pleasures of reading crime fiction. Among the many diverse figures whom Barzun reexamines -- leading to fresh portraits -- are Shaw, Berlioz, Swift, both Henry and William James, Dorothy Sayers, Chapman, Agate, and Diderot. Jacques Barzun draws the reader into his enthusiasms with an infectious style and keen insights. A Jacques Barzun Reader is a feast for any reader.
A collection of 45 columns and essays by the three eminent writers, originally written for the bulletin of the Readers' Subscription Book Club.
Drawing from the works of influential figures in art and literature, the author traces the development of romanticism from classicism and the emergence of the modern ego.
In this international bestseller, originally published in 1959, Jacques Barzun, acclaimed author of From Dawn to Decadence, takes on the whole intellectual -- or pseudo-intellectual -- world, attacking it for its betrayal of Intellect. "Intellect is despised and neglected," Barzun says, "yet intellectuals are well paid and riding high." He details this great betrayal in such areas as public administrations, communications, conversation and home life, education, business, and scholarship. In this edition's new Preface, Jacques Barzun discussess the intense -- and controversial -- reaction the world had to The House of Intellect.
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