Current reading: a tourist’s guide to modernity
From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I haven’t finsihed reading this book, and will add to these comments when I do. I recently picked it up again after putting it aside , and then putting other books on top of it, after I’d got about halfway through.
It’s a kind of history and tourist’s guide to modernity. I was moved to pick it up again after an internet discussion on science, magic and miracles.
I first came across Jacques Barzun when I was working on my masters dissertation and read The modern researcher, which he wrote with Henry Graff, and found it enormously helpful, and have recommended it to postgraduate students ever since. So when I saw this new book of his in a bookshop I had no hesitation in buying it, and i have bot een disappointed.
Notes from underground 