Jacques Barzun Turns 100

This has nothing to do with chess, but today Jacques Barzun, an historian and critic whose work I enjoy and admire, is one hundred years old, and I just want to mark the occasion here. My colleague Bob McHenry has a fitting paean to the professor here.

Chances are you've never even heard of Barzun, but he was an intimate of people you have heard of, such as Auden and Trilling, and he was one of the great men of letters of the 20th century. The 21st, too, come to think of it. Was and is. And as if to prove that there's a blog for everything you can imagine, there's even one for Barzun's birthday. If you indeed have never heard of Barzun, I recommend the recent article about him in The New Yorker.