Jacques Barzun

Cultural historian and former Columbia University provost Jacques Barzun chooses seven of his favorite books. He is the author, most recently, of From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (HarperCollins, $36).

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Bantam Classic, $4.45). The nearest thing to an epic in American literature, with moments of humor characteristic of the author before his latter-day pessimism.

All Night at Mr. Stanyhurst’s by Hugh Edwards (out of print). A strange, short novel that has been rediscovered more than once, been called a masterpiece by James Agate and Ian Fleming, and became popular as a BBC broadcast. In my experience it never fails to grip those to whom I recommend it, though its power, like its plot, is hard to explain.

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The Honorable Picnic by Thomas Raucat (out of print). A novel of Japan that is hilarious through much of its span and turns beautifully tragic in a brief scene at the end. Expertly translated from the French.

Unbought Spirit, a collection of essays by John Jay Chapman, edited by Richard Stone (University of Illinois Press, $17.95). Chapman was a great American cultural critic whose humor and verbal freedom are more in tune with our mood today than with that of the 1920s.

Observations by Mr. Dooley by Finley Peter Dunne (Classic Books, out of print). The Irishman who dispenses wisdom as well as liquor in Archey Road, Chicago, is the man who said years ago that “the Supreme Co-ort follows the iliction returns.” It’s hard to choose among his seven volumes of sagacious humor. The one cited here sustains the double character of my list so far: high comedy in works less well-known than they deserve.

Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead (Free Press, $16.95). An altogether serious work; without knowledge of this work, a reader of humanist leanings remains ignorant or uncertain about the place and bearing of science in society and in his own mind.

Principles of Psychology by William James, in the original two volumes (Dover; Vol. 1, $11.96; Vol. 2, $13.56). It may seem a formidable, perhaps an arid assignment-not so. Skip the first 80 pages if you take neurons and synapses for granted, but start with the “General Conditions of Brain Activity” and you will soon be entranced by matters close to your daily doings-your memory, perception of time, stream of thought, power of attention, and the like, all of it forming a lucid narrative studded with references to life and literature, including Jane Austen.