In Praise of Jacques Barzun

Historian Jacques Barzun was born on November 30, 1907, at Créteil, France, when Darwin's theory was still very fresh in the collective mentalité of the Western world. Indeed Joseph Dalton Hooker, Darwin's close confidante was still alive, as was the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Living in retired comfort at Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset, England, Wallace still had yet to write his grand evolutionary synthesis, The World of Life, three years later and...