Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun

Jacques Martin Barzun (November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He wrote on a range of topics as broad as baseball and classical music, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education.

Barzun's Teacher in America (1945) was an important influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United States. He would publish over 40 books, and win both the American Presidential Medal of Freedom and be knighted in the French Legion of Honor. His New York Times best-selling magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, was published in 2000, when he was 93 years of age.