In what is probably the last major book in a long and celebrated career, French-born Jacques Barzun writes about the West with an eye to understanding why, as he puts it, 'the culture of the past 500 years is ending.' . . . He says that long before we scour the Third World for scraps to add to the cultural canon, we should rediscover the neglected masterpieces of our own culture. He is disgusted by ritual denunciations of the West and calls the reign of political correctness a modern-day Inquisition. . . . Barzun has no faith in universal solutions because he understands people are unequal. . . . It follows that whatever is old is obsolete, wrong, dull, or all three,' Barzun writes.
Entertainment becomes the chief goal in life for many people.