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Because this is a cultural history, it is not suitable for someone looking for a comprehensive description of the events of the past half millennium. You will find little mention of kings and politics, battles and treaties. For that sort of history, try "The Story of Civilization" by Will Durant, or "Europe" by Norman Davies or "Europe, 1815-1914" by Gordon A. Craig. If you are not already familiar with the contents of those (or similar) books, "From Dawn to Decadence" will be difficult to follow. The biggest failing in this book is the author's poor understanding of basic science and technology. He confuses "force" and "energy" and reads something ridiculous into scientists using two names for what he takes to be the same thing. Incredibly, he somehow manages to confuse "quanta" with "half-life." He equates pseudo-sciences like homeopathy and osteopathy with authentic developments in medicine. And he occasionally indulges in the wildest speculations on the impact of recent scientific discoveries, trying to argue that quantum mechanics supports Bishop Berkley's contention that matter isn't real. Given the huge role played by science and technology over the period under discussion, this is a terrible shortcoming. An almost equally serious problem is the author's determination to share the works of countless almost-forgotten artists, writers, and philosophers. Obviously Barzun feels that these people made serious contributions that are shamefully underappreciated today, and one expects some exposure to less-familiar names in a book like this, but as the list gets longer and longer (and as Barzun skips over many of the major talents in each age) this gets more and more difficult to take seriously. The relative lack of footnotes is surprising in a book of this type, and the reader looks in vain for support for some of the author's more daring claims. Even such footnotes as there are often address some trivial side point rather than offering evidence for the larger ones. One feels that rather than researching the book, the author simply constructed it from memory. The numerous spelling and even grammatical errors likewise detract. Minor things annoy as well. He quibbles endlessly about the "true" meanings of words. He claims technology shouldn't be called "technology" but "techne" instead - and then proceeds to call it "techne" for the rest of the book. Or that "utopia" should be written "eutopia" and then inflicts that on us too. This sort of nonsense becomes very tedious after a while, as does his habit of writing KEY IDEAS in small caps. Finally, his argument that the West has become decadent ultimately boils down to bitter resentment at the lack of popular interest in the various classic works the he himself treasures and lack of respect for purity of the language. Given that he has chronicled how different ages change their ideas of what makes for good art, music, literature, and philosophy, and how language use has changed as well (e.g. he reports that the Victorians couldn't discuss body parts - not even arms and legs - without using euphemisms) it seems surprising that he attributes the same things in our culture to decadence. There are a few good things in here - his technique of spreading the bibliography throughout the text (rather than collecting it at the end) is a good one, and his prose is generally readable and sometimes entertaining -- but nothing worth suffering through 800 pages for.