The Idea of Decline in Western History by Arthur Herman Simon & Schuster, $300 Professor Arthur Herman's idea - an excellent one - is to trace the pessimistic strain in Western thought through the past couple of centuries or so.
Pessimists, one could argue, all tend to be the same, while optimism takes a thousand forms. A multitude of rosy futures beckon believers in progress; the end of the world is the end of the world.
And the end of the world has been nigh for a long time. This book starts with the 19th century, but there are plenty of earlier examples.
Professor Herman's approach yields many opportunities: thinkers both obscure and important are deftly summarised and chronicled. Links are traced, anecdotes related and knotty philosophical problems unravelled. Our author displays a talent for lucid exposition and a lively wit. As befits the co-ordinator of the Western Civilisation Programme at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, he takes a broad view.
The main problem with this book is that his purpose is polemical rather than descriptive. The reader soon discovers that Professor Herman's own sentiments are violently opposed to those of all the people he profiles. Not only are their views given short shrift - albeit this is often no better than they deserve - but he misses no chance to highlight unsavoury aspects of their personalities.
So we are told that historian Arnold Toynbee was a coward, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre lied about his war record, his German counterpart Friedrich Nietzsche died mad and historian Oswald Spengler failed in his first attempt at a PhD. All available dirt is dished.
This sort of thing would be acceptable if equally entertaining snippets tending in the other direction were also offered. But they are not. Professor Herman wishes us not only to disagree with his subjects but to despise them.