American Panorama
Short critical introductions to books recommended in American Panorama, Eric Larrabee, ed., New York: New York University Press, 1957. Kessinger Publishing Company [reprint], 2010.
American Panorama - 1957 edition
Two of Barzun’s own recently published works also were recommended by other critics. Clifton Fadiman’s appraisal of God’s Country and Mine (1954) deserves to be quoted here: “[Barzun] is not fooled by the European café-society denigration of the American culture; he is too good a European for that. Nor does he assume that the good life has reached its fulfillment here; he is too good an American for that. He is balanced without being a compromiser; and, though amiably merciless in seeking out weaknesses, he keeps always in mind that many of them are the ubiquitous weaknesses of twentieth-century industrial man. … As an intellectual’s graceful but never superficial survey of mid-century America, this book may be recommended virtually without qualification.” (page 26)
The following page recommends Barzun’s Music in American Life (1956), described by John A. Kouwenhoven with more praise than this partial quotation regarding the book’s origin offers: “There is no better evidence of the cultural revolution Jacques Barzun (1907– ) describes than the fact that a report written by the dean of the graduate faculties of a great university, for the Committee on Musicology of the American Council of Learned Societies, gives attentive and thoughtful consideration to juke boxes, jazz, and the economics and aesthetics of phonograph recording, as well as to concert programs, music education, and the principles of music criticism.”
JB’s recommendations of 33 authors and brief remarks on their 35 books may be found on the following pages:
8 The Selected Letters of Henry Adams, edited by Newton Arvin
9 Relation of the State to Industrial Action and Economics and Jurisprudence by Henry C. Adams
16 The American People and Foreign Policy by Gabriel A. Almond
28 The American Faith by Ernest Sutherland Bates
30 Revolution and Tradition in Modern American Art by John I. H. Baur
36 The Dramatic Event by Eric Bentley
63 The Selected Writings of John Jay Chapman [edited by Jacques Barzun]
64 America’s Music by Gilbert Chase
76 Our New Music by Aaron Copland
78 Charles Ives and His Music by Henry Cowell and Sidney Cowell
105 Lincoln Reconsidered by David Donald
111-112 Mr. Dooley at His Best by Finley Peter Dunne, edited by Elmer Ellis
152 The Selected Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, edited by Henry Goodman
153-154 The Politics of Woodrow Wilson by August Heckscher
164 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes
175 Selected Papers on Philosophy by William James
176-177 The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
185 The Life and Times of Kin Hubbard by Fred C. Kelly
188 Our American Weather by George H. T. Kimble
197 The American Impact on Russia – 1784-1917 by Max M. Laserson
201 Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
213 A Short Walk from the Station by Phyllis McGinley
226 The Oxford Book of American Verse, compiled by F. O. Mathiessen
231 The American Language by H. L. Mencken
262 Genesis of a Music by Harry Partch
265 The Thought and Character of William James by Ralph Barton Perry
275 American Romantic Painting by Edgar P. Richardson
278 Individualism Reconsidered and Other Essays by David Riesman
297-298 The Life of Reason by George Santayana
302 A History of American Philosophy by Herbert W. Schneider
320 Alexander Calder by James Johnson Sweeney
330 The Middle of the Journey by Lionel Trilling
343 Victor Herbert by Edward N. Waters
374 How We Invented the Airplane by Orville Wright
American Panorama - 2010 reprint
