Book Review

[Everett & Son Books]

Hello, y'all:

	From the 27 Jan 97 Publisher's Weekly Forecasts:

"The Idea of Decline In Western History" Arthur Herman. Free Press, $30.00
400pp. ISBN 0-68482791-3

	'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'....snip and cut here...chop chop;

	'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 paradoxical ones, who welcome destruction as heralding a new
order. Although Nietzsche and Herbert Marcuse deserve honorable mention in 
this catagory, 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 tha the German master race is equal to the task of 
saving the soul of civilization.' ....machete' chop, chop, etc. Pub Mar. 97

	Comments?... and who is Christopher Lasch?

Dale. 
	"They might well kill me, but they won't eat me." Clyde Barrow