Highly regarded for his works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun turns his gaze to the past tumultuous hundred years. Taken from "From Dawn to Decadence," his landmark study of the past five centuries, Barzun's enthralling analysis of the Twentieth Century rates the present not as a culmination of Western civilization, but as a decline. Barzun is in no way, however, a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the normal close of great periods in history and a necessary condition of the creative novelty that will burst forth -- tomorrow or the next day.