Reddit Reddit reviews From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

We found 7 Reddit comments about From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
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7 Reddit comments about From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life:

u/caferrell · 5 pointsr/TheNewRight

It may not make you feel any better, but you might understand how we got here, how we managed to destroy everything that was most noble and beautiful in western civilization by reading "From Dawn to Decadence" by Jacques Barzun

u/[deleted] · 5 pointsr/politics

You mean a machine of death like a video game controller. Or you mean like the two Asian ladies whose truck got shot up during the Dorner manhunt? Newspapers have surely killed millions, but not an immediate visceral that we imagine police officers possibly encountering (now I'm trailing off into my own amusing idylls because it's obvious that cops shoot people, dogs, and property all the time. It happens in big city police departments and small town departments too. It happens enough that it is a tired cliche almost.)

I feel sorry for people like you, unwilling or incapable of seeing the truth about the police in the USA. They tend to be at the nexus of corruption in a government. I think it might be all those guns, you know the ones that ATF agents leave on car roofs as they speed off to solve another case. Such Heroes <3

(I always prefer the -es suffix to to the -s suffix for the plurals of nouns ending in -o. However if the noun ends in -oo I use the -s suffix. I find the institutionalization of using only the -s suffix for the plurals as highly indicative of things like police criminality. The corruption of traditions is part and parcel of modernity and post-modernity, but so it seems, police states as well. Having to live in a nascent one [(now the joke's on both of us, this is true meta)](http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395825405&sr=8-1&keywords=infinite+jest) does not mean I have to all my plurals in -s. Get it -- no probably not, but the link(-es) (keeping it POMO) above you should attain somnolent perspective? And remember kiddies Arbeit macht frei )

u/brutal_buzzkiller · 3 pointsr/DebateDE
u/59petunias · 2 pointsr/slatestarcodex

Depends what you mean by "modern" - within the last thirty years? I can't speak for non-fiction but 80s fiction was very much up its own backside, so I wouldn't bother with the majority of it.

I can't think of any modern non-fiction that springs to mind as something I'd recommend; most of the big best-sellers seem to me to rely too much on a formula (find some obscure or forgotten nugget of past history/technology, spin it into a thrilling tale of lone hero against forces of human and natural obfuscation, and finish with triumphant victory of new theory/field/better mouse-trap).

That being said, I did enjoy Jacques Barzun's 2000 [From Dawn To Decadence] (https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Decadence-Present-Western-Cultural/dp/0060928832); I can't say I agreed with all of his conclusions, but I did enjoy the broad sweep of history and the chance to see a French-centric perspective as a change from the usual England and America-centric one you generally get in such historical reviews.

Also it's a brick of a book in the original hardback and gave my wrists good exercise in building up strength merely holding the damn thing to read it :-)

u/rockinbeth · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Came here to mention 1984 but Orwell has been well represented! Farenheit 451, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Logan's Run, and Dharma Bums are also gems. I am also a horror and sci-fi junkie; Necronomicon and Carrion Comfort (Dan Simmons) are badass. But if I only had one book to read, although it is nonfiction, it is sublime: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present (Jacques Barzun).
http://www.amazon.com/From-Dawn-Decadence-Western-Cultural/dp/0060928832

u/keithdok · 1 pointr/books

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun

The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin

I love these kinds of history books (along with the frequently mentioned "Brief History of Nearly Everything") that summarize a great deal of knowledge and history into one book. I don't need to be a specialist on one particular event or period or place, but I love to just have a general context and understanding of historical trends and events. I feel like a well read person should be able to have a conversation with an expert in any subject without embarrassing themselves. You don't need to know everything but you shouldn't be ignorant.

u/Apiperofhades · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

I did go to that subreddit. I just kinda thought I wanted to become learned and try to make my New And Special country a bit more realistic history wise. That's what I'm asking for things to read about those centuries. Plus, even if I throw realism out the window, studying history will tell me what to fill my country with content wise.

I must point out you said historical specification is important, but then you generalize about the whole middle ages and explain why a democracy would be impossible during that period. That's the kind of broad history I'm interested in.

But I do wish to learn. I want to find things I can fill my fictional history with in terms of content. Events I could add that take place in it's 400 years of history. What would you recommend I read? How do I avoid anachronisms?

Let me give two books I think would actually help me

From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun

A Brief History of France

The Seventeenth Century: Europe 1598-1715