懵懂童年：秀兰•邓波儿

    不到10岁的秀兰•邓波儿在长达四年的时间里一直是最有票房号召力的明星。20世纪30年代晚期，她在20世纪福克斯公司（20th Century Fox）每部电影中的片酬达到史无前例的5万美元。她定义了“童星”一词，而这也是她自传的书名。

    但过早的成功往往伴随着把童年奉献给辛苦工作、而不是玩耍的代价。在普通孩子四处游玩和涂鸦的年纪，邓波儿每年就要参演4部电影。

    “年少的冲锋者们愿意在年纪轻轻时就牺牲了自由和选择，”位于纽黑文市的咨询顾问、《像个老板样》（It's Okay to Be the Boss）的作者布鲁斯•塔尔干说。“他们在年幼时就把大把的时间和精力投入到专心致志的追求中。”

    虽然邓波儿在22岁时息影，但早年的那种牺牲为她提供了平台和知名度，使她得以活跃于政坛，担任公司董事，成为老布什执政时期美国驻捷克斯洛伐克的大使。

Childhood: Shirley Temple

    Before the age of 10, Shirley Temple enjoyed four years as the top box-office draw in America, earning an unprecedented $50,000 per film from 20th Century Fox in the late 1930s. She gave definition to the term child star, which was the title of her autobiography.

    But early success often comes with the cost of devoting your childhood to hard work rather than play. Temple acted in four films a year at an age when ordinary children swing in the playground and master cursive writing.

    "The early young chargers are willing to sacrifice freedom and choice at a young age," says Bruce Tulgan, New Haven-based consultant and author of It's Okay to Be the Boss. "They put in a huge amount of time and energy in a focused pursuit at a very young age."

    Although Temple retired from movie-making at age 22, that early sacrifice gave her the platform and name recognition to become active in politics, serve on corporate boards, and fill the role of U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

豆蔻青春：尼克•阿洛伊西奥

    有多少脸上长着青春痘的少年少女们对尼克•阿洛伊西奥的故事向往不已？他在12岁时自学编程，15岁时打造出新闻摘要应用，促使投资者李嘉诚的维港投资（Horizons Ventures）向这项技术投资了30万美元。经过了其他几轮融资并更名为Summly之后，阿洛伊西奥在2013年3月以3,000万美元的价格，把这款应用出售给了雅虎（Yahoo），加入了这个总部位于加州森尼维尔的科技巨头，在英格兰的家中办公。现年17岁的他已经与阿什顿•库彻、艾维•尼沃和Yoko Oko等投资者和顾问称兄道弟。

    “我想保持某种程度的谦逊，”他对《卫报》（Guardian）说，他的动机不只是金钱。“我的动机是技术和产品，对于我想做的事，现在这些只是一个开始。”

    芝加哥大学（University of Chicago）经济学家大卫•加伦森的研究显示，不同于那些通过实验和辛勤研究来创新（这可能需要数十年）的人，在职业生涯早期就崭露头角的创新者往往能实现观念性的突破。

    “有两种截然不同的创新者。传统上被视为天才的人就是我所说的实现观念性突破的人。他们拥有全新的创意，”《高龄大师和年轻天才》（Old Masters and Young Geniuses）的作者加伦森说。“形成全新抽象概念的能力在职业生涯早期往往最为重要。”

Adolescence: Nick D'Aloisio

    How many pimply-faced adolescents salivate over a story like Nick D'Aloisio's? He taught himself to code at 12 and at 15 created a news summary app that prompted investor Li Ka Shing's Horizons Ventures to invest $300,000 in the technology. After a few more rounds of funding and a name change to Summly, D'Aloisio sold the app to Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) for a reported $30 million in March 2013, joining the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based tech giant from his home base in England. Now 17, he hobnobs with investors and advisers like Ashton Kutcher, Vivi Nevo, and Yoko Oko.

    "I try to maintain a level of humbleness to this," he told the Guardian newspaper, adding that his motivation wasn't simply monetary reward. "Because the motivation was technology and product, this is just the beginning of what I want to do."

    Research by University of Chicago economist David Galenson finds that innovators who make their mark early on in their careers tend to accomplish conceptual breakthroughs, as opposed to those who innovate through experimentation and laborious research -- which can take decades.

    "There are two very different kinds of people who make innovations. The people who are traditionally regarded as geniuses are the people I refer to as conceptual. They have a brand-new idea," says Galenson, author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses. "The ability to form new abstractions tends to be greatest early in your career."

双十年华：杰西•乔伊娜•柯西

    “对我而言，成功永无止境，”杰西•乔伊娜•柯西说。她六夺奥运会奖牌，被《体育画报》（Sports Illustrated）评为“20世纪最杰出的女运动员”。“我设定了很多目标，也实现了很多目标。站在这个立场上来说，我取得了很多次成功。但这并不意味着我该做的都做完了。”

    24岁时，乔伊娜•柯西在1986年墨西哥友好运动会（Goodwill Games）上成为首位突破7,000分的女性。挑战不仅在于从体力上征服七项全能，还在于顶住精神压力。此后，乔伊娜•柯西继续在社区工作和个人爱情方面给自己设定新的目标。

    “我总是在寻找新的挑战。我总是把目光对准下一个障碍。正是这些障碍督促着我每天早上醒来继续奋斗，”她说。“如果无所事事，就会整天昏昏欲睡。”

    《成功人士共有的8个特征》（The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common）一书的作者理查德•约翰说，对进步的不懈追求是获得成功、保持成功的重要因素。这些成功人士必定保持了那种进取精神。“在整个生命中取得成功的人从来不曾改变。他们始终如一，”他说。“如果你正在追求自己的爱好，那就不懈地追求下去。”

20-something: Jackie Joyner-Kersee

    "Success for me is never quite completed," says Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a six-time Olympic medalist and Sports Illustrated's pick for the Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th Century. "There are successful moments from the standpoint of the goals I set and was able to reach. That doesn't mean the work is done."

    At 24 years old, Joyner-Kersee became the first woman to break 7,000 points in the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow. The challenge was not only in physically being able to master all seven track and field events, but also in standing up to the mental pressure. Since then, Joyner-Kersee continues to set new goals, in her community work and personal relationships.

    "You're always looking for new challenges. You're always looking at what's going to be the next roadblock. It's those roadblocks that help me get up in the morning and keep working every day," she says. "If you have nothing to work for, you're asleep all day."

    A relentless pursuit of progress is typical of people who become and stay successful, says Richard St. John, author of The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common. Such achievers must maintain that drive. "The ones who are successful throughout life don't change. They stay the same," he says. "If you're following your passion, keep following it."

而立之年：理查德•布兰森

出生日期：1950年7月8日

    早在创建航空公司或者对移动技术产生兴趣之前，理查德•布兰森就凭借与他人合办的维珍唱片公司（Virgin Records）取得了成功。这家公司在上世纪七八十年代推出了性手枪（Sex Pistols）和文化俱乐部（Culture Club）等乐队组合。他起初是杂志发行人和音乐唱片邮购分销商，现在则执掌一家拥有数百个不同业务的公司。

    “我不想过得太舒适。我喜欢努力地去争取，看看我到底能做到些什么。我认为，这种生活更加令人快乐，”布兰森对作者理查德•约翰说。他把成功分为内在和外在两种。

    内在成功或许就是你缩短了自己完成马拉松的时间。外在成功或许就是（以布兰森为例）执掌大型风险投资公司，成为英国第四大富豪，同时还被女王伊丽莎白二世授予爵士头衔。

    作者塔尔干说，虽然金钱奖励可能是推动力，但金钱和权力其实只是达到目的的手段。这些东西使成功人士可以自由地决定如何支配自己的时间、住在哪里、过怎样的生活和与谁共坠爱河。

    “成功对不同的人意味着不同的东西，”花费15年时间就成功问题进行采访的理查德•约翰说。“向他们提出有关金钱的问题时，他们不是那么感兴趣。但谈到爱好时，他们就会容光焕发……我交谈过的所有真正成功人士都热爱他们所做的事情。”

30-something: Richard Branson

Born: July 8, 1950

    Long before he launched an airline or grew interested in mobile technology, Richard Branson made his mark with the music label he co-founded, Virgin Records, introducing groups like the Sex Pistols and Culture Club in the 1970s and 1980s. He began as a magazine publisher and mail order distributor of music records, and now heads a company with hundreds of different business lines.

    "I don't like to get too comfortable. I like to push and see what I'm capable of, and I think people get more satisfaction if they live their lives in that way," Branson told author St. John, who divides success into inward and outward categories.

    Inward success might be beating your personal time in a marathon. Outward success might be -- in Branson's case -- overseeing a venture capital conglomerate, being the fourth-richest U.K. citizen, and receiving a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

    While financial rewards may seem to be a driving motivation, money and power are actually just a means to an end. Such things buy successful people the freedom to decide how they spend their time, where and how they live, and with whom to build relationships, says author Tulgan.

    "Success means different things to different people," says St. John, who spent 15 years interviewing people on success. "When you ask them about money, they're not that interested. The minute they talk about the passion, they light up ... I haven't talked to any really successful person who doesn't love what they do."

不惑之年：埃丽卡•莱昂纳德

出生日期：1963年3月7日

    去年夏天，情色小说《五十度灰》（Fifty Shades）的成功令人无法错过。这个三部曲讲述了大学生安娜斯塔西娅•斯蒂尔和百万富豪企业家克里斯蒂安•格雷之间的爱情，充斥着奴役、支配和虐恋等元素。《出版周刊》（Publishers Weekly）报道称，出版商Vintage得到了2亿多美元的销售收入，纸质书和电子书在美国的销量达到4,000多万册，全球销量高达7,000万册。环球电影公司（Universal）和焦点影业（Focus Features）向作者埃丽卡•莱昂纳德支付了500万美元以获得电影版权。莱昂纳德用E. L.詹姆斯的笔名撰写了该系列小说。

    “着手去做那些事情的时候，根本没有预料到能取得这样的成功，”莱昂纳德对《好莱坞报道》（Hollywood Reporter）说。“我作出了非常清醒的决定：‘我在那里？我现在在干什么？接下来是什么？这真是令人惊叹。’享受它。感受它。不管周围发生什么，接受它，享受此时此刻。我就是这么做的。”

    莱昂纳德是已婚母亲，膝下有两个已经进入青少年时期的儿子。她受到吸血鬼爱情小说和电影《暮光之城》（Twilight）的启发，开始以同人小说的形式写作，吸引了一群读者，他们提供反馈意见并把这本书推荐给朋友。她最终重写这部小说以实现独立，消除了《暮光之城》里的角色和背景，并在2010年底把书搬到了自己的网站上。2011年，澳大利亚的独立出版商作家咖啡店（The Writer's Coffee Shop）以电子书和按需印刷形式出版了这个三部曲。该系列小说大受欢迎，引起了制片公司的兴趣。

40-something: Erika Leonard

Born: March 7, 1963

    Last summer, it was impossible to avoid the success of the Fifty Shades erotic romance novels, a trilogy about the relationship between college student Anastasia Steele and millionaire business-owner Christian Grey, featuring elements of bondage, dominance, and sadomasochism. Publisher Vintage reaped more than $200 million in sales, according to Publishers Weekly, selling more than 40 million copies in the U.S. and 70 million copies worldwide of paperback and e-book versions. Universal and Focus Features reportedly paid $5 million for film rights to author Erika Leonard, who writes under the pen name E. L. James.

    "When you set out to do those things, you don't anticipate this type of success at all," Leonard toldThe Hollywood Reporter. "I make very conscious decisions to say, 'Where am I? What am I doing now? What now? This is amazing.' Just enjoy it. Feel it. What's happening around you, just take it all in and enjoy this moment, and I do that."

    Leonard, a married mother of two teenage sons, began the novels as fan fiction inspired by theTwilight vampire romance books and movies, drawing a following of readers who gave feedback on her writing and recommended it to friends. She eventually recast the books to stand alone, eliminating the Twilight characters and setting, and moving them to her own website in late 2010. In 2011, an independent publisher in Australia, The Writer's Coffee Shop, published the trilogy in e-book and print-on-demand versions, where the popularity of the series led to interest from film studios.

知命之年：朱莉娅•查尔德

出生日期：1912年8月15日

    对于自己的厨房已在史密森尼美国国家历史博物馆（Smithsonian's National Museum of American History）得到复制的朱莉娅•查尔德而言，她对成功的看法非常具有个人色彩。 她在2000年接受《时尚先生》（Esquire）杂志采访时说：“公众迟早会忘记你，对于你的记忆会逐渐消失。但重要的是，你在人生旅途中影响到的那些个人。衡量成就的标准并不是获奖，而是做自己喜欢做、而且相信值得做的某件事情。”

    我们都已经知道，对于查尔德而言，这件事情就是食物。她35岁左右的时候，她丈夫保罗•查尔德被派往巴黎，担任美国大使馆的文化交流大使，她作为随迁配偶也迁往巴黎。她在那里爱上了法国烹饪，还进入巴黎蓝带烹饪学校（Le Cordon Bleu cooking school）学习，师从几名厨艺大师，最终与法国朋友西莫内•贝克和路易赛特•贝尔托勒一起教授烹饪课程。她们三人在1961年出版了《掌握法国烹饪艺术》（Mastering the Art of French Cooking）一书。这本书后来成为畅销书，进而让查尔德走上了成功烹饪作家的职业生涯。

    20世纪60年代，她在获奖烹饪节目《法国厨师》（The French Chef）中担任主角：以一种声音低沉、独特低调的方式向一代美国人传授烹饪方法。随后的几十年里，她的厨房成为其他几个电视烹饪节目的场景。

50-something: Julia Child

Born: Aug. 15, 1912

    For someone whose kitchen has been reproduced in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Julia Child's outlook on success was remarkably personal. "Sooner or later, the public will forget you, the memory of you will fade. What's important are the individuals you've influenced along the way," she told Esquire in 2000. "The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile."

    That something for Child, as we all know, was food. In her mid-30s, she moved to Paris as the trailing spouse to her husband Paul Child, assigned there as an officer with the U.S. Information Agency. She fell in love with French cuisine, studying at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, learning from master chefs and eventually teaching cooking classes with French friends Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. The trio published Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961, which became a bestseller and launched Child into a successful food-writing career.

    In the 1960s, she starred in the award-winning cooking show The French Chef, teaching a generation how to cook in a distinctive, low voice and unassuming manner. In subsequent decades, her kitchen became the setting for several other TV cooking shows.

耳顺之年：阿黛尔•道格拉斯

出生日期：1946年12月9日

    阿黛尔•道格拉斯是一名国会工作人员，曾经参观了一家养殖场。结果，食用家禽拥挤而不卫生的饲养环境震动了她。她想，如果普通消费者知道这种情况的话，他们会感到震惊和愤怒的。这番经历一直萦绕在她心中，还促使她取出自己401(k)雇主养老金账户中的全部现金——当时约80,000美元，发起了一项人道养殖家畜的认证运动。

    多年来，她身为自己于2003年创立的非营利组织——养殖动物人道关爱组织（Humane Farm Animal Care）的执行董事，每周工作7天，每天工作18个小时。这个组织在对待家禽、饲养家禽及其他做法方面为那些希望获得“人道养殖认证”（Certified Humane）标签的养殖场设置标准。人道养殖认证标准超越了有机标准，后者对确保家禽的舒适养殖环境或待遇方面并没有任何帮助，而只是对可以向家禽提供的抗生素和饲料加以限制。

    2007年，她获得了旨在奖励60岁及以上社会企业家的“目标奖”（Purpose Prize），2008年又当选为“爱创家伙伴”（Ashoka fellow）。这些褒奖给她的事业带来了急需的宣传效应，而且使她获得了一个由其他志同道合的活动家共同参与的群体。但她最看重的里程碑是下面这些数字：去年有7,680万头家畜在人道养殖认证计划下得到养殖，与该组织成立第一年的14.3万头家畜得到人道养殖认证相比有大幅增加。

    她说：“我认为这就是成功，我为这类产品创造了一个市场，以此向生产商和供应商表明，消费者想要这样一个市场。他们每个人都可以帮助做出改变。”

60-something: Adele Douglass

Born: Dec. 9, 1946

    As a congressional staffer, Adele Douglass toured a farm and was horrified by the crowded and unsanitary conditions of the animals being raised for food. If average shoppers knew, she thought, they would be horrified and outraged. The experience lingered with her and prompted her to cash in her 401(k) -- about $80,000 at the time -- and launch a campaign to certify humane treatment of farm animals.

    For years, she worked seven days a week, 18 hours a day as executive director of the nonprofit organization she founded in 2003, Humane Farm Animal Care. The group sets standards for treatment, feeding, and other practices on farms that want to be labeled Certified Humane®. Humane standards go beyond organic standards, which do nothing to ensure the animals' comfort or treatment but merely limit antibiotics and the kind of feed that can be given to animals.

    In 2007, she won the Purpose Prize for social entrepreneurs who are 60 or older, and in 2008, she was elected an Ashoka fellow. The recognition brought much-needed publicity to her cause and gave her a community of other like-minded campaigners. But the milestone she values most is in the numbers: 76.8 million animals raised under the Certified Humane® program last year, up from the 143,000 animals certified in the organization's first year of existence.

    "That's what I consider success. I created a market for this type of product to show producers and suppliers that consumers want it. They individually can help make change," she says.

从心之年：沃伦•巴菲特

出生日期：1930年8月30日

    人生进入这个十年，许多成功企业家或许只会考虑打高尔夫球和阅读间谍小说，但巴菲特却在美国经济复苏中发挥着作用。他曾先后向布什政府和奥巴马政府的高层行政官员提供建议，而且在金融危机调查委员会面前就造成危机的原因予以作证。他是在经济衰退期间获得盈利的少数几名投资者之一，早在房利美（Fannie Mae）和房地美（Freddie Mac）股价暴跌之前就已抛售了这两只股票，而且在没有人愿意出手相助的时候向高盛集团（Goldman Sachs）和通用电气（General Electric）给予投资。

    巴菲特把自己获得的成功归功于自己在工作中获得的快乐。他曾说：“金钱只是我把自己喜欢的事情做得特别好的一个副产品。”他称自己的态度是“跳着踢踏舞去工作”。

    整个20世纪70、80年代期间，他把伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway，财富500强企业）从一家小型纺织制造商打造成一家实力雄厚的控股公司。上世界90年代，这家公司开始发售A类股票，巴菲特也一跃成为亿万富翁。考虑到他是世界上最富有的人之一，但几十年来却一直居住在奥马哈的同一幢五卧室住房里，而且自己驾驶汽车，由此可以看出他确实是出了名的谦卑低调。

70-something: Warren Buffett

Born: Aug. 30, 1930

    In a decade when many successful businessmen are thinking only of tee times and spy novels, Warren Buffett played a role in the economic recovery, advising top administration officials under Presidents Bush and Obama as well as testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission about the causes of the meltdown. He was one of the few investors to make money during the recession, unloading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities well before they tanked and investing in Goldman Sachs and General Electric when nobody else was willing.

    Buffett attributes his success to the joy he takes in his work. "Money is a by-product of doing something I like doing, extremely well," he has said, describing his attitude as "tap dancing to work."

    He transformed Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) from a small textile manufacturer into a powerful holding company throughout the 1970s and 1980s, becoming a billionaire when the company began to sell class A shares in 1990. He's famously humble, considering he's one of the world's wealthiest men, living in the same five-bedroom Omaha home for decades and driving his own car.

壮盛之年：弗吉尼亚•哈密尔顿•阿代尔

出生日期：1913年2月28日

    想象一下，如果你一生都在写诗，但很少出版诗作，因患青光眼而失明，然后出版了一本非常畅销的诗集，突然就获得了关键而公开的成功。这就是弗吉尼亚•汉密尔顿•阿代尔的故事。这位英语教师的诗作在她20多岁时就得到了《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）和《新共和》（The New Republic）杂志的接受，但随后对发表流程越来越不抱幻想，进而不再投稿。

    她在1996年接受美国公共广播公司（PBS）《新闻时间》（Newshour）节目采访时说：“我相当有竞争力。我要做就做好，不然就不做。我还做许多其他事情，我非常享受教学。我想，我先后在五个学院或大学教了差不多25年的书。这是一份全职工作，我还有一名全职丈夫和三个全职孩子，没有时间去思考。”

    事实上，阿代尔在失明之后写了比之前更多的诗，因为她有更多的空闲时间。1995年，她的好友、诗人罗伯特•梅泽伊鼓励她把自己最好的诗作整理成一本书，她然后把这本书秘密寄给《纽约客》（The New Yorker）杂志。 《纽约客》杂志发表了其中几首诗以及一篇赞誉阿代尔的文章之后，兰登书屋出版了这本题为《甜瓜上的蚂蚁》（Ants on the Melon）的诗集。这本书先后出版了四次，而且作为一本诗集，它的销量可谓异常高。

    芝加哥大学（University of Chicago）经济学家戴维•盖伦森的研究发现，实验型创新者的创造力高峰出现在生命晚期，那时他们所积累的经验及磨练自己技艺所花费的时间手艺凝聚成辉煌成就。只需看看弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫、保罗•塞尚、费奥多•陀思妥耶夫斯基或约翰•达尔文的职业生涯便可知晓，他们都是在经过很长的一段职业生涯之后才做出了巨大的贡献。他说：“他们都是通过反复尝试，无把握地工作之后，在人生晚期、而不是早期获得卓越成就的人。”

80-something: Virginia Hamilton Adair

Born: Feb. 28, 1913

    Imagine writing poetry your entire life but publishing little, going blind from glaucoma, and then releasing a blockbuster volume of poetry that garners critical and public success. That's the story of Virginia Hamilton Adair, an English professor who had poems accepted by The Atlantic and The New Republic in her 20s, but then grew disenchanted with the publishing process and stopped submitting.

    "I was quite competitive. And I either wanted to be very good at it, or just to let it alone," she told PBS Newshour in 1996. "And I was doing a lot of other things. I was enjoying teaching tremendously. I taught for about 25 years in, I think, five different colleges or universities. And that was a full-time job, and I had a full-time husband and three full-time children, and there just wasn't -- wasn't time to think."

    Adair actually wrote more poetry after she went blind than before, because she had more free time. In 1995, her friend and fellow poet Robert Mezey encouraged her to collect her best work in a book, which he secretly sent to The New Yorker. After The New Yorker published a few poems and an admiring essay about Adair, Random House published the collection as Ants on the Melon, which has had four publishing runs and has sold an unusual number of copies for a poetry volume.

    University of Chicago economist David Galenson's research has found that experimental innovators peak in creativity late in life, when the accumulated experience and time spent honing their craft coalesces into brilliance. Just look at the careers of Virginia Woolf, Paul Cézanne, Fyodor Dostoevsky, or John Darwin, all of whom made tremendous contributions after a long career. "These are people who work by trial and error, work uncertainly, and they become great later rather than early," he says.

耄耋之年：雅克•巴赞

    雅克•马丁•巴赞在93岁时出版了《从黎明到衰落》（From Dawn to Decadence），描述了西方生活从1500年到现在的文化历史，而且成为《纽约时报》畅销书。这本巨著称职地成为巴赞职业生涯的顶峰成就。他在自己的职业生涯期间，曾先后赢得美国总统自由勋章、法国荣誉军团勋章，而且出版了30多本书，主题从科学和医学到文学、艺术、及古典音乐都有。巴赞在1945年出版的《美国教师》（Teacher in America ）一书影响美国教育多年。

    巴赞在巴黎长大，十几岁时迁往美国，然后先后在哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）获得历史学学士学位和博士学位，他后来成为哥伦比亚大学研究生院的教授和院长。许多人把文化历史领域的开创归功于他。美国哲学学会（The American Philosophical Society）甚至设立了一个雅克•巴赞年度文化历史奖（Jacques Barzun Prize）。

    他在2001年接受C-Span电视频道采访时曾表示，他从来没想过自己会在90多岁时进入畅销书排行榜。 他说：“我从事写作已太久了，可能已属非法，没有人应该像我这样持续写作这么久。”十多年后，他在104岁的高龄过世了。（财富中文网）

    译者：千牛絮、iDo98

90-something: Jacques Barzun

    At age 93, Jacques Martin Barzun published From Dawn to Decadence, a cultural history tracing Western life from 1500 to the present, which became a New York Times bestseller. The tome was a fitting capstone to Barzun's career, during which he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor and published more than 30 books on subjects ranging from science and medicine to literature, art, and classical music. Barzun's 1945 book Teacher in America influenced education in the U.S. for many years.

    Raised in Paris, Barzun moved to the U.S. in his teen years and earned a bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, where he was later a professor and dean of the graduate school. Many credit him with creating the field of cultural history. The American Philosophical Society awards an annual Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History.

    In a 2001 interview with C-Span, he said he never expected to be on the bestseller list in his 90s. "It's been a long stretch and probably illegal. Nobody ought to carry on as long as I have," he said. He died more than a decade later at age 104.