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First tagged "america" by Brian Merson
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Why America Failed shows how, from a birth as a republic of "hustlers" to a fall as an empire, a collection of a country's enlargement valid to be a instruments of a demise
Why America Failed is a third and many enchanting volume of Morris Berman's trilogy on a decrease of a American empire. In The Twilight of American Culture, Berman examined a inner factors of that decline, display that they were matching to those of Rome in a late-empire phase. In Dark Ages America, he explored a outmost factors—e.g., a fact that both empires were eventually pounded from a outside—and a attribute between a events of 9/11 and a story of U.S. unfamiliar policy.
- In his many desirous work to date, Berman looks during a "why" of it all
- Probes America's joining to mercantile liberalism and giveaway craving stretching behind to a late sixteenth century, and shows how this ideology, along with that of technological progress, rendered any choice extrinsic to American history
- Maintains, some-more than anything else, that this biased prophesy of a country's purpose finally did a republic in
Why America Failed is a argumentative work, one that will shock, anger, and renovate a readers. The book is a sensitive and provocative reason of how we managed to breeze adult in a stream situation: economically weak, politically passe, socially divided, and culturally adrift. It is a debate de force, a absolute end to Berman's investigate of American majestic decline.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1913 in Books
- Published on: 2011-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Editorial Reviews
From a Inside Flap
During a final century of a Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to repudiate that their civilization was in decline. Only with a viewpoint of story can we see that a emperors were wrong, that a sovereignty was failing, and that a Roman people were reluctant or incompetent to change their approach of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is loyal of twenty-first century America. The republic and a sovereignty are in decrease and zero can be finished to shelter their course. How did this come to be?
In Why America Failed, Berman examines a growth of American enlightenment from a commencement colonies to a present, shows that a seeds of a nation's "hustler" enlightenment were sown from a really beginning, and reveals how a really collection that enabled a country's enlargement have turn a instruments of a demise.
At a core of Berman's evidence is his avowal that hustling, materialism, and a office of personal benefit though courtesy for a effects on others have been absolute army in American enlightenment given a Pilgrims landed. He shows that even before a American Revolution, exposed self-interest had transposed a common good as a primary amicable value in a colonies and that a artistic energy and mortal force of this thought gained overwhelming movement in a decades following a resolution of a Constitution. As invention proliferated and attention expanded, railroads, steamships, and telegram wires quickened a mad gait of progress—or, as Berman calls it, a apparition of progress. An blast of production whetted a nation's voracious ardour for products of all kinds and gave a hustling life a purpose—to acquire as many objects as probable before to death
The power of Wall Street and a 2008 financial meltdown are positively a many manifest examples currently of a disastrous consequences of a office of affluence. Berman, however, sees a manipulations of Goldman Sachs and others not as some kind of aberration, though as a judicious endpoint of a hustler culture. The fact that Goldman and a ilk continue to flower in a arise of a disaster they wrought simply proves that it is already too late: America is unqualified of changing direction.
Many readers will take difference to many of Why America Failed—beginning, perhaps, with a title. But many some-more will review this provocative and judicious book and join Berman in origination a long, tough reassessment of a nation, a goals, and a future.
From a Back Cover
Praise for
Why America Failed
"Morris Berman is one of a many prophetic and critical amicable and informative critics. He marries a laser-like comprehension with a low dignified core. His essay is as wholesome and frail as it is insightful.His newest book, Why America Failed, rips open a dim and failing body of empire.His research is sobering and mostly joyless .But a law during this theatre in a diversion is depressing, really depressing. Those who exclude to face this law since it is unpleasant, since it does not enthuse happy thoughts or offer fake hope, are in moody from a real. The common shelter into self-delusion has remade outrageous swaths of a American proletariat into a rare class of adult-children who live in aPeter Pan universe of make trust where existence is never available to be animpediment to desire. It is too bad Berman, who sees and writes about all this with a overwhelming clarity, lives in Mexico.It gets waste adult here."
—Chris Hedges, author of Death of a Liberal Class and Empire of Illusion
"Morris Berman's masterpiece is a brutally honest, splendidly crafted,exceptionally well-documented dissertation on how America was spawned, several hundred years ago, to assimilate a offspring—financially, socially, and technologically. Why America Failed shines a harsh, destined light on a deceit business mindset during a core of America's creation, expansion, and devolution. Berman describes with overwhelming clarity how and since a 'hustler'mentality, on that a nation was predicated, eviscerated choice dignified or amicable doctrines, and so incorporated a seeds of a self-destruction from a really inception. This book is as worried to review as it is unfit to miss."
—Nomi Prins, author of It Takes a Pillage and Other People's Money
"Morris Berman beheld that it's not morning in America anymore. His summary might arise adult a millions who are oversleeping while a late-day charge cloudsgather over this land."
—James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency
"As a decrease of America's sovereignty becomes both starker and graduallyevident, zero is some-more critical than permitted analyses of a causes of that decline. Far too few such works exist since of a taboos opposite essay them. All a some-more acquire afterwards is Morris Berman's clear, bluntly though cogently created work. Sensitive to a contradictions of U.S. story and how they arenow personification themselves out in a altered world, this book will plea and incite in all a best senses of those words. Genuinely critical to review and to consider about."
—Richard D. Wolff, Emeritus Professor of Economics,University of Massachusetts Amherst
About a Author
Distinguished informative historian and amicable censor Morris Berman has spent many years exploring a gnawing of American multitude and a decrease of a American empire. He is a author of a critically acclaimed works The Twilight of American Culture, a New York Times Book Revie w "Notable Book," andDark Ages America.
Customer Reviews
Most useful patron reviews
61 of 65 people found a following examination helpful.
By Jerome Langguth
Morris Berman's finish to his trilogy on America (Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America are a initial two) penetrates even some-more deeply than a progressing books into a roots of a stream inhabitant and informative malaise. As another reviewer noted, Berman's book gives us many to simulate on in tie with debates over a Occupy transformation and a approaching destiny of America. But distinct any other diagnosis of these issues we am informed with, Berman looks into a chronological and philosophical underpinnings of American decrease and offers an unflinchingly honest comment of how we got here. The answer Berman offers is as unsettling as it is persuasive: impression is destiny. According to Berman, a American Dream has always been a disfigured anticipation premised on a narcissistic Lockean individualism and an unquestioned faith in a thought of swell firm adult with technological advancement, a dream of a techno- huckster. The book could substantially also have been patrician Why America Triumphed, as prolonged as we keep in mind that in this box to delight is a disaster and a dream was always unfailing to finish in self-destruction. The universe is prosaic since we flattened it. Berman also considers a box of a several "alternative visions" and inner criticisms of America's vendor culture, yet concludes (again persuasively) that nothing of them unequivocally had a chance. we found a territory on a Civil War to be utterly educational and absolute in this regard, as it army us to simulate some-more deeply on what was mislaid there (the normal agrarian enlightenment of a South as an choice to Northern hucksterism) as good as what was won (the finish of slavery). This is substantially a trickiest territory of Berman's book, and a one many approaching to be misunderstood, yet Berman handles this element with good skill, insight, and compassion. The contradictions and paradoxes of American story have a comfortless dimension that is good articulated here and elsewhere in a book, and one is led to a finish that a American approach of life was doomed to self-destruct from a beginning. This is a book we should all be reading now; a Moby Dick for a 21st century. That we didn't examination that one possibly until it was too late usually serves to endorse Berman's dour prophesy of American decline.
38 of 40 people found a following examination helpful.
By Joseph A. Domino
If we have examination a initial dual books of Morris Berman's trilogy (The Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America), Why America Failed reads like a kind of post-mortem. While a initial dual books consult a abominable state of a enlightenment in a present, Berman, in his third volume, takes a some-more chronological view, in a debate sense. What were a causes? What led to where we are now that is going nowhere fast? Why America Failed is a kind of "signing off." Not so apart destiny stating of America's majestic decrease can usually be that of an unrecognizable dystopia: a politically crumbled and fractured Unites States into a collection of post'empire neo'fiefdoms.
Berman distills a dystopia down to a many component basis: tangible and driven by a hustler genius with record as a smoothness system.
Chapter Four, "The Rebuke of History," presents an surprising (to me, not an in-depth tyro of history) of a not ordinarily discussed causes of a American Civil War and how they made a "techno-hustler" enlightenment that was to overflow a whole nation and eventually be a undoing, yet a roots extend behind to a beginnings.
Berman writes "In contrariety to a fervour for income that characterized a North, a South was guided by ideals of honor, courage, amiability, and courtesy." This of march is tangible everywhere in America today, right?
This is a diametrically opposite enlightenment compared to a expostulate for element swell of a North. This was a hint of a clash: dual opposite ways of life. Not usually slavery, an wickedness by any standards of course. Not usually refuge of a Union (which was Lincoln's pushing objective).
I wish any detractors of Berman's outline of a antebellum South do not make fake associations about him ancillary a enlightenment that embraced slavery, contracting a proof of those who tag Mark Twain a extremist for regulating a "N" word in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Speaking of Twain, isn't Tom Sawyer utterly a tiny proto-predatory entrepreneur even before a Civil War as he persuades a area kids to compensate him for a payoff of whitewashing his fence? Twain knew what a hustler was. What Tom, a witty rapscallion, did is frequency opposite than Bank of America's thought (recently abandoned) to assign business a $5 monthly price to use their withdraw cards (their possess money), this in a light of their recently reported third entertain increase of $60 billion as good as appearing layoffs. This is one common sign of decrease and dysfunction: "corporate psychosis" They're not usually hustlers, they're crazy hustlers (abuse your employees and customers). If you're not a hustler, you're a "witch" and historically we know what we do with witches. Incurious George put it best: "You're possibly with us or opposite us."
So, is this "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen?" Open a gates and rush a realm? Berman does residence "the doubt of where contemporary `Southerners' can go to shun [the] dystopia..." Near a finish of a book, Berman discusses pockets of politeness and village in Europe and even Mexico where substantial bettering would be necessary. For those who know a existence and stay, there is a friar choice he introduced in The Twilight of American Culture. Step off a hustler grid and carve out a tiny corner, do something meaningful, and even in a tiny approach make a difference. "If we wish a non-hustling life," Berman writes, "you are really improved off attack a road."
In territory five, "The Future of a Past," Berman does not offer a light on a horizon, that as he says books of this arrange are approaching to provide. The enlightenment of a hustler final that a citizenry sojourn mired in a anticipation that wealth is around a dilemma no matter what. Berman will not solicit to that. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville from 150 years ago: "I know of no nation in which, vocalization generally, there is reduction autonomy of mind and loyal leisure of contention than in America." This is a feel in that we exist. The correctness of a outline practical to a benefaction is chilling to contend a least.
29 of 30 people found a following examination helpful.
By Pat Fitz
When a author of this work, Morris Berman, was once asked how he could go on vital meaningful what he did about a state of a United States, he responded that a law creates him high. Many would-be readers of Why America Failed will be disquieted by a contribution laid out in this book, yet what is a alternative? Ignorance or delusion, it would seem, are a usually other options. That choice will have to be left adult to a individual. The truth, however, usually like a hustling and accumulation Berman writes about, is addictive. And for those unaffected adequate to pursue it, is intensely rewarding, not to discuss officious fun during times. Who among us does not know a euphoria felt on rapacious a tough sought answer or insight? These epiphanies of judicious smiles are many in Berman's latest book. He has a talent to benefaction minute research of surpassing egghead investigate in a infrequent and permitted demeanour while still carrying fun and interesting a reader. It is not mostly that we examination a thoroughfare of implausible discernment all a while chuckling during a delivery. Why America Failed is an considerable and interesting work in this regard. My personal justification is that we examination this book in one day, and am during best an normal speed reader. Some might find a high volume of quotations in this book distracting, yet we have simply taken them as leads on additions to my ever-expanding "to read" list. The truth, after all, is addictive. we owe a good debt of thankfulness to Morris Berman for being a pusher who incited me on to this high.
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First tagged "america" by Brian Merson
More Detail Information tags: government, qaz, society, america
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