About the Author

Arthur Herman is the bestselling author of Freedom’s Forge, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, The Idea of Decline in Western History, To Rule the Waves, and Gandhi & Churchill, which was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Herman taught the Western Heritage Program at the Smithsonian’s Campus on the Mall, and he has been a professor of history at Georgetown University, The Catholic University of America, George Mason University, and The University of the South at Sewanee.

Reviews

Herman (history, George Mason Univ.; coordinator of the Smithsonian's Western Civilization Program) traces the idea of Western civilization's decline as it has appeared in the writings of political thinkers of the last two centuries. He begins with a brief review of the concept of decay as seen in societies from antiquity to the 18th century. He then turns to the writings of Nietzsche, Brooks Adams, W.E.B. Du Bois, and various others and examines their concepts of decline, whether racial, moral, cultural, or intellectual. Al Gore makes an appearance in one chapter on eco-pessimism: "Gore compares the modern West to a dysfunctional family." One chapter is devoted to Arnold Toynbee, who, typical of the writers under discussion, seems to welcome the end of Western civilization. Academic in subject but written in a style that appeals to informed readers, Herman's work is recommended for academic and large public libraries.‘Norman Malwitz, Queensborough P.L., N.Y.

Herman neatly sidesteps the question of whether the West is actually in decline. His disclaimer at the outset is that he only intends to trace the idea of decline as expressed by intellectual pessimists of various persuasions. Some doomsayers view the "inevitable" collapse with dread and resignation; others regard it with grim satisfaction. John Adams and Arnold Toynbee are typical of the first sort, Adams viewing Americans as squandering their birthright as the "redeemer nation," Toynbee realizing that the British empire is not immortal after seeing ruined Baroque palaces in Venice. Representing the second type are American thinkers such as Gore Vidal, Christopher Lasch, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag and Kirkpatrick Sale. Each of these paints the modern world as spiritually bankrupt, displaced and isolated, psychologically scarred. In this typology of "decliners," the most interesting are the paradoxical ones, who welcome destruction as heralding a new order. Although Nietzsche and Herbert Marcuse deserve honorable mention in this category, it is Oswald Spengler who wins the prize, for The Decline of the West (1918-1922), in which he rejoices at the collapse of Europe and reassures his readers that the German master race is equal to the task of saving the soul of civilization. Herman, adjunct professor of history at George Mason University and coordinator of the Smithsonian's Western Civilization program, takes us through these heady thoughts with great panache and erudition, a brisk and cordial guide to the slough of despond. (Mar.)