Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

Decline of the American Empire #3

by Morris Berman

Why America Failed shows how, from its birth as a nation of "hustlers" to its collapse as an empire, the tools of the country's expansion proved to be the instruments of its demise Why America Failed is the third and most engaging volume of Morris Berman's trilogy on the decline of the American empire. In The Twilight of American Culture, Berman examined the internal factors of that decline, showing that they were identical to those of Rome in its late-empire phase. In Dark Ages America, he explored the external factors—e.g., the fact that both empires were ultimately attacked from the outside—and the relationship between the events of 9/11 and the history of U.S. foreign policy. Why America Failed is a controversial work, one that will shock, anger, and transform its readers. The book is a stimulating and provocative explanation of how we managed to wind up in our current economically weak, politically passe, socially divided, and culturally adrift. It is a tour de force, a powerful conclusion to Berman's study of American imperial decline.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Philosophy, American, American History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Distinguished cultural historian and social critic Morris Berman has spent many years exploring the corrosion of American society and the decline of the American empire. He is the author of the critically acclaimed works The Twilight of American Culture, a New York Times Book Review "Notable Book," and Dark Ages America."

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parts of this book were really illuminating and it's the exact kind of comprehensive social critique of modern culture that I think we need more of. He cites a voluminous amount of sources and picks up the tradition of Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan and others.

However, there is a huge gaping rotten flaw at the center of the book--his idealization of the South as the model civilization that could have led the way toward a more meaningful American culture as opposed to the North's crude industrialization. Let's leave aside his ahistorical claim that the war was not just about slavery--actually, let's not leave that aside. Is it really his contention that the South spent all that money and human lives to protect an intangible culture of honor?

The main problem is his contention that slavery (though he admits it to be abhorent) was anti-capitalist and allowed for a slow agrarian culture. This is just not true--see all the modern scholarship on American capitalism (Sven Beckert, Baptist, Seth Rockman, and many many others). Slavery was indeed quite profitable and actually the stuff slavery created helped kickstart Northern industrialization. It would not have ended but for the war (or westward expansion). That's why they fought to keep it. Moreover, he never quite articulates what it was about southern culture that was so much better than elsewhere. He realizes that there were many different subcultures in the south, but then depicts the north as a monolith culture of wage labor and the factory. What about the Transcendentalists, the abolitionists, the utopians, the quakers, all of these strands of cultural thought and critique (which he quotes at length when it serves him) were northern. I was actually ready to hear a critique of industrialization and capitalism. I was even ready to hear a defense of the south. But this just doesn't get it right.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline" is Morris Berman's latest installment in a trilogy of books by one of our most prescient and important social and cultural critics. As he's been doing for over a decade, Dr. Berman looks at America at this particular juncture and offers a diagnosis that isn't a pretty one. Believers in the American myth of never-ending progress and technology's capacity to save us will be sorely disappointed, if not downright angry. They'll dismiss Berman as a crank, or perhaps worse for someone like Berman that cares about his subject--ignoring him and his work altogether. That would be a tragedy in my opinion, not heeding what Berman has to offer.

In his prior two books on America's decline as an international power, Berman carefully and methodically made the case that our country had descended into a place of cultural ignorance that was affecting our ability to function as a nation. In “Why America Failed,” Berman picks up where “Dark Ages America” left off and picks up on the continuing debate among certain kinds of historians about America's trajectory as a nation.
While the book begins a bit slowly in my opinion, with Berman citing multiple sources, once things get rolling, they move quickly. Berman doesn't dilly dally around, but quickly makes his point, drawing on the work of a multitude of respected sources and writers. This allows him to make a strong case that America's been a nation of "hustlers" since the get-go, which Berman comes back to regularly throughout WAF.

Chapter 4, titled, "The Rebuke of History" is the book's strongest and most compelling, in my opinion. Berman knew he'd be misperceived and wrote about it on his blog. The chapter deals with the Civil War, what Shelby Foote called the defining event in American history.

"Why America Failed" is the book that all Americans should be reading. It would help them understand the nation that they proudly hail as something that it's not, and a national period of self-reflection might cleanse our culture of its hubris. Now I know I'm delusional for even thinking what I just wrote. One can dream, however, right?

Berman ends the book with what I think is a very honest assessment. He again mentions what led him to leave the country. He also discusses how most writers, when completing a work like this one, contradict what they've written by pulling a "rabbit out of the hat" at the eleventh hour. Berman does no such thing and he discusses why he doesn't.

Berman concludes with a reflection on what he sees as the hows and whys of America's collapse. This collapse, according to Berman, won't be immediate, or dramatic, but a slow, but steady demise. He calls this Act III (a), where the alternative tradition, existing on the margins, may gain followers and provide some solace for a fraction of Americans. This would be a type of "monastic option." Politically, it may take the form of an OWS protest movement. Individually, it might mean learning to grow your own food, embracing the best of the "appropriate technologies" that were promoted by E.F. Schumacher in his book, Small Is Beautiful, which came out in 1973 and highlighted technologies that were appropriately scaled, and sustainable. Maybe learning and beginning to use skills that your grandparents possessed 50-60 years ago. These are things that those on the fringes that recognize from what direction the wind is blowing will begin taking steps in preparation for a future that will be vastly different.

[Bill Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing the reader has to deal with is the book’s provocative title. Berman has said that his original title was “Capitalism and its Discontents” with emphasis on the discontents; the publisher made him change it to something they felt would sell better. I feel both titles are unfortunate, because they might serve to drive away those who would best benefit from this book, while attracting those who are probably already aware of the gist of the argument – although the latter could certainly gain from Berman’s well-supported historical survey of the issue at hand. What is the issue at hand? I think it could be summed up by an alternate title: “Hucksterism Against the Commonweal.”

Berman here traces the history of the US and finds that our core founding principle wasn’t freedom but hucksterism. We’re always selling something to someone -- even our bodies and minds -- and we’re always buying. What we especially like to sell and buy is bullshit. (That’s my term, not Berman’s.) This all comes at the cost of the common good, eroding communities and leaving only the war of all against all.

Extensive footnotes support his argument, and he makes it clear that he’s not the first to argue so. Many have gone before him, from Emerson and Thoreau to Lewis Mumford to Vance Packard to Jimmy Carter. In the end, when we’re about nothing but the individual pursuit of material wealth, we’re about nothing at all. It’s the lopsidedness of our behavior that’s unique – it’s not just that some of us, or even most of us, are hucksters. It’s that we all are. We have to be, to make it in America. While there are good aspects to this, the bad aspects destroy the foundations of any commonweal that might mitigate those bad aspects. Without community and values beyond getting rich, we’re just going to get lonelier and more withdrawn into illusions – such as the persistent illusion we tell ourselves that we actually have communities and values.

Berman believes that, since hucksters are all we have ever really been (despite the “alternative tradition’s” attempts to get a foothold, outside of books), that’s all we’ll ever be. Since this is not a sustainable culture, we’re due for collapse, and this is becoming more and more obvious of late, to elements of both the Right (Tea Party) and the Left (the Occupy movement). Unlike some chroniclers of American doom, Berman doesn’t believe we’re going to rally and rescue ourselves at the final hour. His book is a history of what went wrong, not a recipe for how to make it right. And yet… there is still that alternative tradition, the call for community and non-material values. It hasn’t gone away. When the great edifice of empire comes crumbling down, there will still be something towards which to look to get it right the next time.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why America Failed: the use of the past tense may cause confusion in some. If you feel curious instead of indignant, then I can't recommend this book highly enough (if you feel indignant, you should probably at least be curious about why you could possible feel indignant about something that is in no way intended to be insulting. Berman can help you with that, too). For as long as I can remember, I felt there was something wrong with this country, and I wanted to help fix it. American political commentators tend to write within a limited framework; they choose one issue out of the hundreds America faces, explain the problem, and offer endless solutions. As a citizen, concerned about the big picture, this becomes overwhelming and baffling. It often seems that triage is the only tool the activist has: pick the issue closest to you, and leave the other, equally important, issues to die on the battlefield. Or, just turn on the TV and forget about it (it seems to work for the neighbors, right?). Moris Berman chose to view the nation from a broader perspective. He looked at the whole stack of problems, refused to shy away from their enormity, and concluded that Americans had neither the will nor the power to address them in a meaningful way. He concluded that our very culture is poisoned, and that it is only a matter of time until the empire falls.
The conclusion to a trilogy on the decline of the American Empire, "Why America Failed" provides the underlying historical causes of the empire's current ills, and chronicles the failures of those who attempted to alter the trajectory. It can be understood on its own, but the first two in the series, "The Twilight of American Culture" and "Dark Ages America" really provide the foundation for understanding Berman's thesis.
All three books are very well-written. The tone is generally that of a friendly, yet serious conversation. I went into the trilogy assuming I'd experience the same pessimistic gloom that nearly overwhelms me every time a read about contemporary America. Instead, I found a perspective that really freed me to think about what ultimately mattered to me, and what values I'd like to live by. Dr. Berman, thank you for sharing your perspective!

[Frieda Vizel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my fairly new search to understand the American culture (or perhaps the global culture) that gave us Trump, I came upon Berman's work. A moment of googling "criticism of American culture" and a whole new world opened to me.

Berman's ideas are thought provoking, prescient and I had never before heard them quite this way. I'm used to thinking about American problems in terms of liberals versus conservatives, but Berman steps outside the narrow box and defines America in its entirety as a culture of hustlers, and creates a dichotomy between American capitalism and some Utopian society of 'Enough' that maybe exists in Mexico where he moved (only to continue to publish books and participate in our culture, a la a regular American.)

In other words; he seems to at once disparage the culture I think we must all function in, without exactly clarifying the alternative.

In other words. The book is imperfect, but a start for a rabbit hole of new ideas.

I'd say there are two main and not entirely well connected themes in this book.

1. American hustler values and its emptiness.
2. How the American south was not merely a slave holding society but a more slow-paced, value based one, and that the Civil War was more about protecting agrarian lifestyles (slaves and all) than it was about abolition. This distinction - so easily misunderstood as a defense of slavery - is important and sensitive and I appreciate that Berman doesn't shy away from examining it. However - he meanders and goes on and on and on when he could have made his point much more succinctly.

But when it comes to evaluating the hustler values, Berman is more articulate, if not preachy. I was most sympathetic to his denunciation of American capitalistic values; that dog-eats-dog worldview. He sees endemic problems in materialism, and I hear him. Only a culture of acquisition could bestow the highest office to a boor like Donald Trump. Berman goes into the social ills, the rates of anxeity (2/3 anti depressants are consumed here), the loss of community, the myth that every poor man is a rich one about to make it big. But Berman left me feeling unsatisfied with some of his conclusions/generalizations.

*I am not sure I can see how other western cultures are any different. There are some very smart Europeans - yes, as a tour guide I know that many of them come off as much more intelligent and well educated - but is materialism not an issue globally? Look at China and Japan and -- anywhere.
*Berman's conclusion is that America is dying - there is no hope or possible alternative. I am not sure I see how Berman can predict an outcome based on his evidence. Yes, American culture has been dumbed down. That, to me, is the result of the easy life, the atrophy of human effort, the laziness and nastiness of a spoiled nation. A disaster might revive American intelligence. Why is he so sure a crisis won't waken the souls?
*The problem of technology - I am not sure why this is really an American problem. Technological infatuation began in Europe with the printing press and coal and fancy ideas that led to the acquisition of new land over the Atlantic, and it spread globally. America might have been the headquarters of innovation in the 20th century but it is now everywhere.
*What does Berman suggest for the alternative life beyond his own little self sipping decaf tea and listening to Bach in some cozy Maxican adobe? How does he envision an alternative culture that is smarter?

I'll be down this rabbit hole for a while, looking in other corners and at other authors, but I am very glad I read this. It has been a long time since I've heard an idea that felt so fresh and unexpected. Now that's a joy American culture misses sorely.

[Marod · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting insights notwithstanding, there's a niggling feeling one has after finishing the book, as if the author is simply trying to depict USA as some kind of hell on earth because of rampant consumerism and culture of "hustling". Is consumerism good? No. Is impersonal hustling society deeply flawed? Absolutely. Does America have many problems it should acknowledge? Yes. But the alternatives Berman proposes (even if only implicitly) are quite shocking, to say the least.

First and foremost, the basic premise of the book is that USA is based on the simple idea of selfish success, "hustling" as he calls it. There's nothing more about it: no history, no culture, no idea, just random people living on a certain territory only wishing to succeed by getting rich. From the very beginning, Berman asserts, it was the very aim of United States, its "soul". He does cite plenty of good sources to back up his claim, but still an unanswered question remains: if understanding United States is THAT simple - just a loose conglomeration of selfish individuals, how did the country last as long as it did? How did it go through a War of Independence, most devastating Civil war, two World Wars and not just disintegrate when faced with even the slightest challenge?!If Berman's hypothesis is correct, the country should have unraveled centuries ago. If US is just egotistic, atomized people only caring about themselves and nothing more, then surely neither nationalism nor sacrifice would ever be recorded in US history. Berman never answers this obvious question and only implies that "progress" is that social glue that managed to bring the country this far. Such position is honestly unconvincing.

Next problem is that he apparently ascribes every vice, atrocity and cruelty to be uniquely American. Once he remarks that America only tries to destroy the enemy: "You wipe out almost the entire indigenous population of North America; you steal half of Mexico; you literally vaporize a large chunk of the Japanese population; you bomb Vietnam “back to the Stone Age” (in the immortal words of Curtis LeMay); you “shock and awe” Iraqi civilians, and so on." Leaving the historical context aside, the problem here is that he makes it sound that it is ONLY the modern United States that does all these things and those squeaky clean traditional societies he implicitly idolizes (Mexico and Middle East mostly) are some kind of saints and humanitarians during the war. It is funny as he berates Lewis Mumford for being too optimistic and not reading much of United States history. Maybe Berman himself should read up some history too, so he realizes how "peaceful" those traditional societies really are. He will probably be shocked by many manifestations of cruelty that he most likely never imagined (Mongols, Tamerlane, Ottomans, etc.). The description of these traditional societies is also incredibly idealized, with Berman mentioning that, while these (in this case Middle Eastern) societies are repressive, treat women badly and are intellectually static, they have, you know, good hospitality and community. As if the negatives he mentioned should not be an automatic red flag for anyone with a brain cell.

Berman himself had the integrity to follow up his writing with at least leaving the United States, but instead of some hyper-traditional African or Inuit tribe, he chose newly industrialized Mexico as the place of his dwelling. Not exactly what I would call a pre-modern society.

Last but not least is the infamous chapter on American South. Berman tries to re-frame the Civil War conflict into the one between civilizations, deeming the slavery as the focal, but not the principal point of the war. After that he seriously discusses the "honor" of American South and then literally says that while he doesn't wish to live in a society with slavery (at this point in the book, one begins to sincerely doubt that), he does not wish to live under the industrialized economy either, basically equating imperfect North (or modern capitalist economy) and enslaving South. This neutral stance should probably be a dead giveaway that something is deeply wrong with the book and Berman himself. Even if taking all his doom and gloom assumptions (some true, some doubtful) about modern industrial economies at face value, these capitalist systems are still miles better than any state with literal slavery.

Overall, the book maybe worth a quick read. Honestly, it would have been much better if the author did not oversimplify the phenomenon of America and idolize traditional societies. Berman wants to have his cake and eat too, he does not want to completely get rid of all the gadgets, innovations and other fruits of Industrial or Technological Revolutions (which, by the way, Mr.Berman, goes a little bit further than just computers an iPads, something as basic as vaccines and medications are also the product of modern capitalist economies), but at the same time wants to have a leisurely life of community and non-hustling. These two are not mutually exclusive, per se, but are hard to reconcile as someone (or something) should still make those material comforts possible and drive the economy further (although Berman does oppose the concept of infinite economic growth, which is reasonable) Perhaps a more encompassing study would have done the job better. As it is, a mediocre book at best.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admire Morris Berman a great deal; I'm currently working my way through Dark Ages America and already I find it a great deal more insightful than Why America Failed. This one strikes me as basically a lot of padding and repetition of previous statements, with some genuinely interesting stuff sprinkled throughout. Namely, I found the controversial chapter on the South and the Civil War quite interesting, regardless of its more dubious points (if nothing else, it's certainly an argument I've barely seen anyone else make); I also thought some of the comparisons between Mexican and American social life and customs were pretty fascinating. But overall, this is a very thin excuse for a book and spends much of its pages simply regurgitating prior opinions. Although it's worth reading for fans of this kind of stuff or Berman's other works, personally I found an hour-long bookstore talk by Berman promoting the release of the book much more interesting (should be the first result under the author and book title in YouTube). Berman is a very intelligent and engaging public speaker; it's his writing that, at least judging from WaF, may need a little fine-tuning.

[Harry Allagree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third and final book (2012) of Morris Berman’s trilogy on the failure of America through imperial decline is really, more or less, a concentrated summary of major themes he’s mentioned in his previous books: “The Twilight of American Culture” (2000) & “Dark Ages America” (2006). There are only 5 chapters, the first four of which point to the factors by which the “hustling life” of the U.S. is leading us into collapse.

THE PURSUIT OF AFFLUENCE
Berman opens by saying “America was from the outset a business civilization...The principal goal of North American civilization and of its inhabitants, is and always has been an ever-expanding economy -- affluence -- and endless technological innovation -- ‘progress’.” His contention, and that of many others even recently, is that this has been our national “addiction”, as evidenced Berman’s quotes from the early days: Captain John Smith (1616): “I am not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will erect there a Commonweal”; Benjamin Franklin (1748): “Time is Money”; Samuel Adams (1770’s): refers to the “Rage for Profit and Commerce” as the American norm; George Washington (1770’s): refers to the “insatiable thirst for riches” of American society and that he’d never seen such a “dearth of public spirit and want of virtue”; John Adams, who claimed that the U.S. had proven to be “more Avaricious than any other Nation that ever existed.”

The author notes that between 1820-1830, only some 31 years after the Constitution was adopted, the number of U.S. banks had grown from 307 to 2000. Alexis de Toqueville (1830’s) describes American life thus, “It is a worried life in which people pursue a success that forever eludes them. Their goal is an undefined material success, to be provided by the largest returns in the shortest amount of time. These are unquiet souls...” So rampant was the idolization of the dollar by the 1800’s, that Washington Irving coined the term the “almighty dollar”. Woodrow Wilson, in 1912, commented: “The truth is [that] we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.” And Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends & Influence People”, published in 1936, was described as a manual for “how to make more money by false geniality.”

This general lust for “more”, particularly money, expansion & power, continues unabated down to the present. The only major voice in the centuries since the Revolution calling for a reassessment of the nation’s values was President Jimmy Carter in 1979: “...too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption...But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning...Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.” He was laughed down and voted out of office, in favor of Ronald Reagan who opened the floodgates: tripling the national debt beyond the $3 trillion mark; never once giving a balanced budget to Congress. His reckless leadership led to personal savings dropping from 8-10% to almost 0% by 1985.


THE REIGN OF WALL STREET
Virtually every modern President, Obama included, has continued or initiated policies which has allowed Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy to dominate America. George W. Bush summed it up well when he jokingly referred to his audience at an $800-a-plate dinner in October, 2000, as “the haves and the have mores...Some people call you the elite; I call you my base.” Currently, the Obama administration is packed with ex-Goldman Sachs honchos, termed by reporter Matt Taibi, the “vampire squid”.



THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS

With the emergence in the U.S. of pivotal figures such as Henry Ford & Frederick W. Taylor, Earlier culture disappeared and technopoly came into being. Neil Postman tags it as “totalitarian technocracy” or “technological theology”. He describes it as “the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology.” In such a culture, as Taylor said, “the system must be first.” Technopoly, though touted as “progress”, has made possible tremendous expansion of information through the Internet, but has actually produced overall an increasingly ignorant, socially isolated, empathy-less, self-centered, more inefficient, rude & buffoonish, shallow, disrespectful, techno-aggressive, frenzied, mindless population, devoid of any sense of cultural inheritance.

THE REBUKE OF HISTORY

This chapter of Berman’s book is quite fascinating. He says that one section of the U.S. refused to buy-in to the illusion created by progess: the South. And for this reason, Berman says, “in the mind of the North, it had to be vanquished.” He repeatedly points out that the exact and definitive reasons for the Civil War have never been truly figured out. However, he does make a good case for two things: 1) It certainly wasn’t a question of the “noble” North fighting the South in order to eliminate slavery out of lofty moral considerations. 2) It was primarily a clash of civilizations: the spirit of chivalry & honor in the South vs. the spirit of enterprise in the North. At root, Berman says, “Slavery was the focal point, but the heart of the matter was that the North wanted to give the South a modern ‘makeover’, and the South had no interest in this project...The shame/honor culture...is the oldest ethical system in human history. Negotiations with such cultures -- for example, those of the Middle East -- require that the stronger party never display disrespect for the weaker one. Symbols of parity must be offered so the latter can save face, and it was precisely this...that the North was not willing to do...Indeed,...the tendency was to regard the South with open contempt, to ridicule and humiliate it...The threat to the South was loss of honor, no less than the loss of slavery; the loss of a whole way of life.” Sheldon Hackney concludes that, indeed, the South was this hustling, grasping, expansionist nation’s only counterculture.

Berman ends the book with a chapter which most people won’t want to read. Nevertheless, he unapologetically refuses to finish on a positive note, as most books of this sort in the U.S. are expected to do, since the majority lives in fantasy. “Hustling, the pursuit of affluence, technology, and ‘progress,’ have amounted to a huge steamroller in American history, a steamroller that is now going off the edge of a cliff.” There is no happy ending, he says, although the collapse probably will be gradual over the next 30 years, rather than quick & violent. He suggests that one can either stay here & tough it out, adopting what he calls the “monastic option”: “resisting the dominant culture and trying to do something meaningful with your life as opposed to living the mass dream.” OR one can look for “pockets of traditional societies” in another part of the world as an expatriate. Berman himself has chosen the latter route, moving to Mexico in 2006. He acknowledges the inevitable trade-offs, but says he finds that he made the right choice: “...These are a people who know how to live, who have their priorities straight, and I’m grateful to be a guest in their country.”

[George Kleinman · Rating 1 out of 5]

In "Why America Failed" Morris Berman posits that the current angst and volatility of US is the direct result of an ingrained tradition of swindling or hustling which he believes was established with the colonization of North America . The financial collapse in 2008 provides him with abundant ammunition for this argument, and clearly, some criminal intent was present in the credit default swaps and other swindles perpetrated by Goldman-Sachs and other financial institutions. Even before 2008, however, there indeed problems that have caused wage stagnation and massive accumulation of wealth by a small number of individuals. An example of corporate malfeasance is the attempts of the tobacco industry not only to suppress the overwhelming scientific evidence about the carcinogenic effects of smoking but also to develop strains of tobacco plants with higher levels of the addictive substance, nicotine.

Where Berman's argument completely derails, however, is in attributing the underlying cause to technology and progress. While acknowledging that Unabomber Ted Kaczynski murdered or maimed several innocent people, Berman's main complaint is that in his manifesto Kaczynski's writing is "sophomoric" and badly in need of an editorThe Anti-Bellum South, Berman asserts, was a truly genteel society that valued contemplation and honor completely unlike the ruthlessly aggressive North that steamrolled over everything in its way. While paying lip service to the fact slavery was abusive and immoral, he seems unjable to appreciate that fact that it was the exploitation of other human beings that enabled the anti-Bellum Southern gentlemen to pursue a life of relaxed contemplation. Criticism is directed at Abraham Lincoln whom the author notes worked to improve transportation in his state, and thus a force for progress and technology.

The author claims the reading a document on a computer monitor elevates dopamine, cortisol, and causes decreased ability to analyze critically. In other words, using a computers causes a form of dementia. Worse still, in the author's view, is multi-tasking which he believes results in impaired reasoning. In different chapters, Berman bemoans that thousands of people in cities like Manhattan live in isolation from one another, but then seems to contradict himself by asserting that technology in the form of iPhone and iPads deprives people of solitude necessary to contemplation. Berman categorically rejects the idea that technology is a tool that can be used or misused: he regards technology and progress as essentially evil.

Not surprisingly, Berman concludes that the situation in the US is hopeless and the country is doomed. The problems that current grip the US are serious and may not be corrected in the fullness of time, but it seems absurd to attribute these as the direct result of technological progress. Nowhere in his screed does Berman mention the uniquely American brands of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism, the substandard educational system, the bloated military budget, the over-extended imperium with at least 900 known bases in foreign countries and an unknown number of covert sites, a non-functioning congress too often manipulated by lobbyists and corrupted by money. In blaming technology and progress which have saved and improved the lives of millions, Morris Berman destroys his credibility.

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I own all three books of this "trilogy" and find Berman's work to be prescient, refreshingly candid, but frustrating. This book is no exception. Throughout, Berman makes a number of extremely valid points about the reasons for the decline of the American system, which in this book focuses on what he calls the "hustler culture". However, Berman's problem is that the dominant thesis in his books is itself immune to contradictory evidence - Berman is convinced that America is a failed state, so he will only find arguments to support that opinion. In short, while I think he demonstrates a high quality of thought, he's still to some degree judging the sources that he uses based entirely on his agenda, and sometimes writes with a very monolithic tone that sometimes undermines his argument.

With that said, the first three chapters of this book posit a provocative and interesting analysis of American society. The fourth really stretches credibility by venturing farther into the realm of American political and military (as opposed to social) history than Berman is qualified to go and delivering an incredibly controversial argument for which I don't think he necessarily has all of his ducks in a row. And the fifth chapter, which suggests remedies, is, as with all Berman books like this, laughably weak - Berman is a great social critic, but his greatest weakness is that he has no credible solutions for fixing the problems he identifies, and obviously has little interest in doing so - it is likely that these halfhearted "solution" chapters at the end of his books are purely a requirement of the publisher, but they're so bad that they undermine everything that came before. In this case, Berman suggests the "Second Vermont Republic" secession movement as something that might offer hope for the future, writing from the perspective of someone who has obviously barely even set foot in Vermont. Speaking as a native Vermonter, the Second Vermont Republic is part of the nationalistic "hustler" problem that Berman identifies: a neo-Confederate group that is in no way taken seriously by the majority of Vermonters and has developed the status of a fringe political party (1% in the last gubernatorial election) and little else. And many of the problems with American society that Berman identifies are manifest in Vermont society, just in slightly different permutations. Berman also ignores convenient mathematical facts that don't fit his argument in cases such as these, e.g. the fact that population and demographic changes mean that Vermont will likely be so underpopulated in 30-40 years that it will barely be able to run itself from day to day, much less be in a position to secede.

Berman could've gotten this information and more from a few minutes spent on Google, and the fact that he didn't even bother with that much reflects badly on his entire scholarly process. Because Berman's research in chapter 5 is so shoddy, it makes me question everything that came before, and his motivations generally. Which is a shame, because chapters 1-3 are among his best work, and I at least appreciate the daring of chapter 4, even if I'm skeptical of the way he presents the overall theory. I just wish the author had done a better job of checking his sources and tying it all together.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of social critics will point out the problems in society, then tell you that if we just did this n' that and the other thing, we could fix it all. Morris Berman isn't that person. He says America is going down the tubes and there's nothing we can do about it, the problem is too endemic. The problem isn't our leaders, it's us.

I like that. I think that's being far more geniune and honest, and after living in this country for almost forty years, I'd say it's more realistic too.

Berman is criticizing America's culture of constant "hustling" to get ahead and make money. Americans are so focused on making money they have little time or interest in anything else. I often hear people talk/brag about how overworked they are, how little sleep they got and how sick they are. I've never understood this mindset at all. It's no wonder we take two thirds of the world's anti-depressants.

Berman spends a lot of time in the book citing alternative voices who tried to warn us along the way. These people were cast aside of course and ignored in our voracious appetite for more. In fact he cites examples going all the way back to the beginning -- several of the founding fathers and Adam Smith himself criticized the greed they saw around them. This has continued up to the present day, but these voices are ignored.

Berman doesn't predict a great crash, but the country's own inner-contradictions and inability to choose a different course will put it into a slow, painful decline. This goes culturally as well, public life in America has become increasingly unbearable in many ways. I notice this in daily life and can say I've seen things grow worse just in my lifetime. I very rarely find anyone under 60 who I can have a conversation with that has any level of depth to it. People are more rude in public, less likely to show empathy for others than they would generations ago (Berman cites a study on this) and everyone's too addicted to their screens to really care.

I've been listening to Berman's lectures and interviews for about five years, but never read any of his books until now. I didn't even intend to read this book, but the writing style was so absorbing that I started reading the first chapter and couldn't put it down.

My favorite Berman quote, from a lecture he did a few years ago:

"The United States is the great experiment in getting people to give up what counts most as a human being, and to substitute toys for it. This will be how the United States is remembered."

[James R · Rating 1 out of 5]

Morris Berman presents himself as someone who knows better than most people and is someone of wisdom. He talks of America as totally brain dead (which many people have said), but that he has the answers. His books are full of questionable assertions, discredited studies (especially in his older books), and lots of ranting against everyone that he doesn't like. He now lives in an echo chamber (his blog) ranting from Mexico. His insights about America & the world generally are as a whole, wrong. He has a fetish for Japan & Italy, and he refuses to hear about the brutal conditions of Tokugawa Japan or 10th/11th century Italy. He also refuses to accept the evidence regarding the Southern US; he says we just need to be "nuanced" (his definition of nuance is that his view is nuanced, everything else is black and white). All of this is done so he can say, "if you don't agree with me on all things, you're wrong and bone headed." He also has this fantasy that he will be vindicated in the future and that everyone will say he was right. Something tells me he will be considered just another self-indulgent academic blowhard of the 20th century, but with a Zen Buddhist flavor. He has a small group of disciples who find his jokes and style funny, and they constantly tell each other they're right. He'll just be forgotten and his fanboys will find someone else to latch on to.

He will criticize the public schools, his mean neighbors in D.C., and the military, but his ultimate conclusions are what? That America is collapsing and we should either leave the country or hunker down and read blogs & laugh at everyone?

His ideal country seems to be some kind of blend of Zen Buddhism, fornication, and self-indulgence, but of course with everyone reading all the right philosophers. I can't see a lot of wisdom in someone who encourages people to sleep around and bash everyone as an idiot.

Re: the book, he promotes the "Lost Cause Myth" of the civil war. It's a whole genre in itself, and Berman just pushes the same old stuff (e.g. "the war wasn't really about slavery, it was about states' rights"). Don't bother with this book or anything else by Berman. There's a reason people stopped wanting to publish his books after this.

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of many of the problems in American society. But not much positive is offered as an alternative. Granted it is a difficult situation and we do seem hell bent on taking a bad social approach to its logical conclusion. But also I think, this is before the recent events with Brexit, Trump and the fake news phenomenon, where there has began to be more hit back against the unitary liberal/neo-liberal and imperial vision of progress that was being forced upon us. And also, its a fascinating thing, as Berman gives credit to certain values of the South in America that were lost in the civil war, excepting slavery, of course, and it is these people that are the main base of support for Donald Trump.

And yet Trump is an archetypal hustler of the northern states of the US, as he describes them in this book. So, what has happened here? Have people been hoodwinked into accepting an accelerated continuation of the hustling individualist way of life? Or is it something different? Given that his support is mainly coming from those who want to preserve community values. While it is those of the traditional northern hustling values that are opposed to Trump, as they seem to have largely sold out to globalist values and liberal decadence taken to its extreme. An extreme he decries in his book. Would Morris Berman be willing to give any credit or allow any distinction or nuance here, or would he just carry on with his same old anti-american self hating narrative, a typical narrative of the liberal north actually in its last stages where it takes self deferral to unhealthy and ridiculous extremes in order to delude itself it is on the side of universal moral values that are a leftover from the imperial vision?

This would reveal his true allegiances, but I would have to read his more recent work to get some idea of this. Nevertheless, for all its overly glass half empty approach, it is a very thought provoking perspective and worthwhile read, and he represents a worthy thinker that must be responded to by those who would like to provide or suggest different more positive alternatives for the future of US society.

[Caren · Rating 4 out of 5]

If nothing else, this book will make you think. Oh, brother, will it make you think. You may catch the flavor of the book from its title: notice that the past tense is used. This is not a book of strategies for how to extricate ourselves from the mess in which we seem to sink further and further by the year. It is simply an explanation of why we are at this low point, and why it was inevitable from the start. You certainly do not have to agree with all Mr. Berman says to find his ideas fascinating. He calls our common culture "hucksterism"; I might call it "dog eat dog". This sort of culture only works if you are young and smart and strong; those outside of those parameters are pushed aside as nonessential. There is, therefore, an undercurrent of anxiety in living here. Perhaps there is an unspoken recognition that we all must age and become less able to scramble our way to, if not the top, at least to an ability to look after our own needs. He contrasts a community of 'gemeinschaft' (that is, harmony and caring for society as a whole) with one of 'gesellschaft'(a pragmatic, rational, expedient society). He explains , on page 88, that these terms derive from German sociologist Max Weber, who noted that the spiritual sense in traditional or premodern societies differs viscerally from that of modern industrialized societies. He also notes the vacuity of our culture, swamped as it is in consumerism. The really interesting thing to me is that this is nothing new. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville (on page 166) as having said, "I know of no country in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America. One might suppose that all American minds had been fashioned after the same model, so exactly do they follow along the same paths." Certainly, Mr. Berman cannot be accused of following the mindset of the country at large. His own discontent has led him to move to Mexico. I see this as an important book, one that should be discussed. I don't have many illusions that it will be.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book of Berman's trilogy concluding what he started in the early post 9-11 years. "The Twilight of American Culture," followed by "Dark Ages America" and now "Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline." Why Amerika failed can be summed up in three words, "Character is destiny." I will stop being so disparagingly critical of AmeriKa because it was willed by the almighty God we are trying so hard to foist upon our citizens. We can't help it; there is nothing we can do to save ourselves because.....it's an addiction. AmeriKa is an addict. AmeriKa is a hustler society. The foundation was laid out by the earliest colonists, lead to the expansion of the country and the explosion of empire as our obsession with technology lead to vaster quantities of consumption which lead to ever more hustling on the part of all; a vicious circle.

The book is well researched, with copious end-notes supporting the arguments that are meticulously laid out chapter by chapter. Chapter 1: The Pursuit of Affluence, Chapter 2: The Reign of Wall Street, Chapter 3: The Illusion of Progress, Chapter 4: The Rebuke of History and Chapter 5: The Future of the Past for all to read, absorb, contemplate and hopefully figure out where you fit into the equation. No answer is provided, there are a few suggestions, so it is up to the reader to decide. A lot of people who should read this will not. I for one feel better about the coming clusterfuck!

[Mike Moskos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because I'm familiar with the themes of this book, the writing here didn't feel very heartfelt: it seemed more like an academic survey rather than something deeply experienced.

For those who read the book and want to answer the question of why slavery in America, see
"1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" by Charles Mann. Immunity to one type of malaria had a lot to do with it. The Africans' immunity to it--which wiped out those of other ancestries en masse--meant they were the only ones who could survive the American South.

Also, sadly the author didn't know--or didn't include--this: ""In order to understand Lincoln’s passion for preserving the Union, you have to put yourself into a different era of federal finance. There was but one source of revenue: the tariff. There were no internal taxes. There was no “too big to fail,” because there was no central bank capable of bailing out an entire industrial base. As Lincoln himself said by way of explanation, “The tariff is to the government what a meal is to the family” (1861). The South’s ports collected 75% of all federal tax revenue. Without that revenue — that’s what secession meant — the federal government would be starved." http://dailyreckoning.com/lincoln-unc...

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent, thought-provoking book that should be required reading for every person living in the USA. Moreover, I think everyone here in my country, Poland, would benefit from reading it, too. After the first Gulf war I realized I'd had my fill of life in the US, and I moved to Central Europe. It was a refreshing change from life in the States. When I moved to Warsaw in early 1992 Poland was a much different and far better place. However, the hunger for consumer goods (and international business
and CIA strategies) resulted in a swift abandonment of values that had served Poles well for many years. Sadly, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Poles have followed the USA's lead like lemmings running to those picturesque sea-cliffs. Thankfully, we still have the universal health-care, long paid vacations, maternity and paternity leaves, access to healthy food, etc. that make life in Europe so much better than life in the States. I left the US long before Berman wrote his first book on the topic,
(The Twilight of American Culture) but he is absolutely right; if you want to live a richer, fuller life, leave!

[Abhi Yerra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book could be more thought of as why does capitalism a problem. It covers that aspect quite well and it would seem that the core which he covers about America is actually a small core of his overall message about capitalism.

What is wrong with capitalism? The problem seems that it encourages a fast life of never ending progress it hout ever reflecting what the overall progresses for. For what end is the progress? What's the Ed goal in mind. There is none. No spirituality no morality.

The authors essential explanation is that america suffers a lot from this because there is no moral undertone to it. Other cultures have that. America the progress is god. And it hassled to an SUVs them mentality.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If it hadn't been for the weakness of the chapter on the American South I would have easily given this four stars; as it was I had a tough time slogging through it because of its' vacuous and facile treatment of slavery. He should have either written an entire book about the basic material in that chapter or left it out entirely. Otherwise his bleak assessment of the American character and culture seems to me to be fairly well in line with both what I observe and other contemporary respected cultural critics (I'm looking at you, Ta-Nehisi Coates). I am certainly interested to see if Mr Berman has a recent publication that extends his thinking to our current political reality.

[Debby Hallett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hustlers, he blames it all on hustling. The author comes over as a bit of a fanatic, but still the message of the book is useful. Or, it's useful to ME. It's an easy read, and if you want more insight into why Americans believe and act the way they do, this will provide some insight and ideas to think about. I'm not sorry I took the time to read it, but when I finished it, I didn't throw it down and shout, 'This is outrageous! Someone needs to DO SOMETHING!!' (That's how I felt when I finished each of Chalmers Johnson's books starting with Blowback.)

[Unreasonably · Rating 2 out of 5]

A retread of earlier works with a side order of Confederate Lost Cause apologia that deeply compromises the central thesis. Despite all his attempted disclaimers, he is far too generous with the cruelty and sadism of the extractive antebellum Southern economy, which was very much integrated into the global market. His work in this book is an example of the utter failure of a culture-first framework: Berman's delusion is that US culture is so all-corrupting and immutable that even the antebellum South can be galaxy-brained into appearing to be a benign alternative.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in spanish, i rate it tree stars just because in the Sexto piso edition page 198 said "podemos considerar el Islam como alternativa, desde luego (We can consider Islam as an alternative, of course)" it was like a stone in the rice, i could not believe he write something like that.

[Rodrigo Nemmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining techno hippie book. Defends the hypothesis that materialism and "hustling" culture will be the downfall of US. In fact, the author was so disappointed with the general direction the country is taking that he moved to Mexico.

I learned interesting historic facts along the journey.

[Fiona Ottley · Rating 3 out of 5]

He makes some interesting points, but I am not completely convinced.

[Lewis Housley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great work by Berman. This whole trilogy has been a fascinating, enjoyable, and terrifying ride through the promise and failure of the American Experiment.

Recommended.

[Richard Kearney · Rating 4 out of 5]

With book titles like The Twilight of American Culture (2000), Dark Ages America (2006), and - most recently - Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline (2012), one might be forgiven for thinking Morris Berman an apostle of doom and gloom. In fact, Berman is nothing of the sort. His work belongs to a noble tradition of social criticism that draws heavily upon the historical record, some of the best contemporary research, and a multitude of other sources to challenge us with a sobering portrait of the country's past, present, and likely future. And because Berman's work deals with the deep structure of American society, including capitalism as an institutional order, the character of U.S. imperialism and its wars, and the corruption and precipitous decline of education and literacy, he has profound disagreements with fellow critics who cover the same ground yet inexplicably conclude that the abundant evidence of civilizational (and ecological) decline can somehow be reversed at the last moment by a counterforce arising from the same society. Berman regards such conclusions as nothing more than wishful thinking, and quite at variance with the record of previous global empires, As he remarks in his own concluding chapter:

"False comfort is, in my opinion, a terribly indecent thing to peddle....The argument of some critics, such as Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore, that the American people have had the wool pulled over their eyes, and that once the wool is removed, we will move forward to a socialist or progressive or truly democratic future - this is fantasy. for the wool is the eyes. The consent may indeed be manufactured, but it is no less real for that....America is a dying culture; it really has no future at all....And collapse could be a good thing, if not exactly fun to live through. The entire premise of America was a mistake from the beginning. A meaningful human society is not about endless hustling and technological progress; these can be part of the good life, but they are hardly equivalent to the good life, and the attempt to make them so has had some pretty untoward consequences." (pages 163-184)

Setting aside Berman's curious suggestion that Noam Chomsky could be regarded as a peddler of false comfort (!), it is clear he intends his book titles to function as a salutary corrective to critics who prefer to offer improbable magic bullet solutions rather than following the evidence they present to their more likely conclusions. In Berman's hands, the forecast of long-term decline is remarkably liberating because it frees him (and us) to consider more effective short-term strategies for pursuing a "good life" that is truly worth living, in service to others. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Berman organizes Why America Failed into five chapters. The first three analyze the sources of U.S. imperial decline in what he calls the "hustling culture," a kind of shorthand for the ideology of capitalist acquisitiveness and the power that political and economic elites exercised from the earliest days of the republic to organize American life in all aspects according to its prerogatives. In support of his argument Berman offers a historiographical review of some of the major interpretations of U.S. history from the colonial period through the American Revolution and beyond, addressing the "republicanism debate" that raged for approximately three decades and coming down firmly on the side of those historians who argued the civic virtue republicans held out as their highest social ideal was no match for liberal capitalism and the promise of affluence through westward expansion and economic growth. Berman gives plenty of attention to the "alternative traditions" in American culture, detailing their critical posture toward the infinite pursuit of material gain, but he concludes that their merits have never been coupled with sufficient political organization or power to constitute an effective challenge to the dominant culture. In some cases these alternative traditions were co-opted, in other cases they were crushed, but for the most part they have simply been marginal to American life.

The third chapter, titled "The Illusion of Progress," offers an especially valuable discussion of the role that the idea of "progress" has played in American culture. While "progress" once encompassed a broad vision of individual, civilizational, and moral development over time in a trajectory that could be traced and supported through a variety of measures, events of the twentieth century called many of the pillars of "progress" into serious doubt. To Berman, however, the problem rests not with the failure of any particular aspect of "progress" - for example, liberty, or democracy, or economic growth, or peace, or science, etc. - to manifest itself with adequate vigor, but rather with the concept of "progress" itself. Berman argues that "progress" has functioned in American culture primarily as a religious concept, that it offers an interpretation of history more mythological than empirical, demanding faith in the absence of evidence to support it, and that in the present context it has been reduced to a vision of ongoing technological innovation, the last stronghold of the dream of "progress," but a very puny vision indeed. Berman subjects contemporary technology to a withering critique, reviewing in particular several unintended and disturbing consequences of the saturation of American life by information technologies and telecommunication devices. The impact of these technologies on American social and intellectual life has hardly been an unqualified success, and in Berman's assessment a great deal of what is most vital to a meaningful life is being lost or unwittingly sacrificed on the altar of technology.

Was there ever a significant political challenge to the dominant "hustling culture" in U.S. history? In the fourth chapter, Berman argues there was a challenge, albeit a highly problematic one, for it arose from the society of the slave South prior to the Civil War. Here Berman acknowledges several historians, particularly Eugene D. Genovese, who have argued the society and culture of the antebellum South, despite the profoundly unjust nature of its labor system and the accompanying racism used to justify it, did represent a serious threat to the ambitions of northern capital, especially with respect to the fate of the western territories. The South envisioned the west as territory for an expanding slave empire, while the North wanted the west for a capitalist labor system. While the South held both regional and federal power in the years before 1860 its political leaders attempted to secure slavery from future political challenges by making the legal regime of slavery nationally enforcible through the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scot decision. More than this, however, the political economy of slavery and the culture of the South presented a critical alternative to capitalist social and labor relations. Ideologues of slavery like George Fitzhugh went so far as to offer a systematic critique of the corrosive nature of capitalist labor relations from the perspective of a slave regime. A social system based on slavery, however, hardly held any moral advantages and in the Civil War the North pursued a policy to destroy the basis of Southern elite power and ensure the South would never again be in a position to challenge capitalism again.

In the concluding chapter Berman offers some forecasts for the course imperial decline is likely to take in the years ahead. Convinced that the "hustling culture" is promoting an advanced state of national decay through its unchecked power to corrode healthy social relationships, corrupt society's key institutions (business, law, education, media, government, etc.), destroy the ecological systems of the planet, and accelerate social inequality at an alarming rate, Berman suggests the best possible outcome might be the growth of new secessionist movements as the various systems that currently hold the nation-state together continue to weaken. A fragmenting of the U.S. as a nation-state might go far in curtailing the imperial violence now committed abroad, reduce the pace of environmental degradation, and perhaps mitigate some of the internal strife that might otherwise accompany decline. Berman notes he has already left the United States and now resides in Mexico, a country with its own set of serious problems but with - in Berman's view - a stronger and more resilient culture than what can be found in the U.S.

Berman is certainly not the first writer to argue that a "hustling culture" not only makes for a poor social glue but that it has a highly detrimental effect on all other institutions and cultural strongholds in the milieu from which it emerged. One can go back to Tocqueville and find similar arguments, and other critics, including Daniel Bell, Richard Hofstadter, Herbert Marcuse, Barbara Ehrenreich, Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, and many more have brought the analysis all the way up to the present. Until recently, however, the predominant tendency has been to couple such critiques with an evaluation of the prospects for reform or renewal, grounded in a belief that the social resources for reversing or at least keeping in check the worst tendencies of capitalist culture were also present and sufficiently strong to be effective. Berman, however, joins a small but growing number of other critics who now argue that reform is no longer a serious option. Instead, the politically agressive and unchecked reign of capitalism and its attendent social relations are dragging the U.S. empire into a long-term and irreversible decline, with strong tendencies toward violence and internal dissolution. Elsewhere Berman has argued for what he calls the "monastic option," whereby individuals and communities committed to preservation of the best aspects of American culture can do their work despite the ongoing social collapse, and he also advocates all forms of nonviolent resistance to a government that is likely to grow increasingly oppressive as its authority comes unglued. There is hope in Berman's work, but it is hope that must be properly situated in a clear understanding of history, a willigness to confront the ugliest aspects of the current social order, and a radical skepticism toward the mythologies of a nationalism that is powerless to stop the "hustling culture" from its ongoing ravages.

[Wendelle]

we all welcome a critique of capitalism or the rapacious pursuit of affluence, but this book is just not very good for the following reasons.

a) it uncritically pushes praise for diametrically opposed alternatives to capitalism, ignoring flaws at the foundations. for instance, among many other instances, he pushes medieval guildship as an alternative to drone work in the office. He makes no mention of the challenges of the medieval model: the vise grip of seniority and nepotism, the lack of of recognition for individual initiative, etc. There was a lot of angry opinions packed together in this book without effort to construct them into unassailable logical argument

b) it seriously needs a strong editing hand. most of the book is a salad toss of quotes from other authors' books and articles, then just accompanied by parenthetical annotations by this book's author.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scathing indictment of American culture and a not-to-be-ignored warning of where it all will lead. Since this book was published in 2012, it's frightening to see how accurate Berman's predictions have been.

I found his style of writing pompous and annoying- however, his message is an important one.

[✨ Anna ✨ | ReadAllNight]

Rec by Tom F

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline, the third installment in his trilogy on the collapse of the USAmerican empire (beginning with The Twilight of American Culture and continuing with Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire ) is vintage Berman. His highly readable rants against the many failings of contemporary USAmerican society locate the deep cause of our nihilism and ennui in a tradition of "hustling," of seeking nothing but commercial and financial success, that extends back to the days of the hallowed Founding Fathers. According to Berman, this driving ideology of the US--that freedom to succeed and to prosper, whatever the consequences for those around you, is the only freedom worth pursuing--has been dominant since the inception of the nation; it goes a long way to explaining why the US is an artless cultural wasteland where wars are regarded as football games and torture is celebrated as a valuable tool in the "War on Terror."

In the most challenging section of the book, Berman asserts that there was an alternative, countercultural tradition in the US, counterpoised to the Yankee emphasis on progress, technology, ingenuity, and acquisition, but that this counterculture of virtue, civility, gentility, and tradition was defeated once and for all in the Union victory over the Confederacy in 1865. He repeatedly argues that the U.S. Civil War was, in the final analysis, a good thing, and that a way of life based on slavery, was, regardless of its virtues, an abomination, but this notwithstanding he also thinks that the aristocratic, European way of life of the South, defeated in the U.S. Civil War, was the first casualty in the United States' century-and-a-half, Borg-like imperial expansion of the "freedom to hustle." My take-away from this is that the U.S. is rooted in two diametrically opposed, and yet equally problematic (abominable?), cultures: one that valued the humanities and meaningful lives while being built on involuntary servitude, and one that values the individual and freedom, but without any guidance as to what that freedom is for beyond the endless accumulation of stuff. Sounds like Uncle Sam was damned in one way or another from the get-go.

With this sort of background, it probably shouldn't surprise that Berman's assessment of our national future is even bleaker than in his two previous works (if that is possible). As well, he continues to insist on the "monastic option" (first discussed in The Twilight of American Culture) as the only course for those who swim against the current in the U.S. In other words, the alternative traditions in the U.S., lacking any political power whatsoever in a "culture" that values nothing but the almighty dollar, need to be preserved on an individual and communal basis by those of us who think that the good life boils down to something more than dying with the most toys. He also talks about being an expat, encourages his readers to join him in his exodus from this sinking ship, and openly says that he doesn't think there is any hope for the U.S. to awaken from this nightmare, because there never really has been much of a national "inner life" to be awakened.

Challenging, infuriating, pessimistic as hell, and impossible to put down, it is, like I said, vintage Berman.