book review

While The Decadent Society is a good book, it is not perfect, and if you'll allow, I'd like to talk about smaller things. My frustration at his love of the moon landing persists, for instance. I find myself thinking that disappearing cult movements are

Ross Douthat believes that religious agnosticism has grown into a torpor, and many fields of inquiry and devotion, but questions about the fate of humankind, specifically, now, more than ever, are met with a shrug. "Who am I to say?" he imagines people responding,

A substantial portion of The Decadent Society is about government. It's hard not to argue that a lot of what's gone weird with America intersects with government. Government has undoubted gotten bigger – not just in budget, but in complexity of rules and amount of

Some chapters in The Decadent Society had me extremely grateful Ross Douthat was finally putting front and center issues that I had cared about for a long time. I've spoken to people, many times, about my deep anxiety and sadness that Americans still want

I don't want to distract you too much, but this is the rare piece on here that I didn't just have to massively edit, but completely burn my first draft and start again. This book is hard to talk about, but I think I