The Decadent Society, Ross Douthat
The Decadent Society, Ross Douthat
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The Decadent Society

Author: Ross Douthat

Narrator: Ross Douthat

Unabridged: 8 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/25/2020


Synopsis

From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a powerful portrait of how our wealthy, successful society has passed into an age of gridlock, stalemate, public failure and private despair.

The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.

Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

About Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page. He is the author of To Change the ChurchBad Religion, and Privilege, and coauthor of Grand New Party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a senior editor for the Atlantic. He is the film critic for National Review, and he cohosts the New York Times’s weekly op-ed podcast, The Argument. He lives in New Haven with his wife and four children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Murtaza on February 04, 2020

Ross Douthat is one of the conservative social critics that I often find worth reading. As the title suggests, this book is his account of what he calls the "decadence" of modern society. Our culture and politics have been sapped of their old dynamism and have reached a point of stagnation, repetiti......more

Goodreads review by David on November 20, 2019

Ross Douthat seems to have discovered that time runs like a programmable treadmill. Sometimes it goes really fast, and sometimes it slows to a crawl. Between the late sixties and 2010, it ran really fast. There were all kinds of developments: space achievements, drug discoveries, computers for all,......more

Goodreads review by Mohamed on September 28, 2022

الكتاب في مجمله عبارة عن خردة سياسية على الرغم من احتوائه على بعض الأفكار الجميلة والتي كان بإمكان المؤلف أن يتوسع في الحديث عنها، ولكن رغبته في الظهور بمظهر، العرّاف السياسي ورطه في وضع قراءات تنبؤية مضحكة لمستقبل العالم .. الغربي تحديدًا......more