Rating: 
Summary: Reasons Not to Read This Book (Revised)
Review: 1) The bibliography reveals that Berman has not only not done original research, but that has not even consulted the original sources of the sociological research he quotes, thus never evaluating the validity of the data. Instead, his sources are newspapers, magazines (esp., the New Yorker), a handful of books, and radio (esp. NPR). Likewise, he is no historical or literary scholar; the depth and breadth of his knowledge of human affairs falls within the narrow range of a pop culturist.2) Berman has conducted no extensive or original journalistic investigations of his own, e.g., has no exclusive interviews or firsthand accounts of major events to offer. 3) Berman relies heavily on anecdotal evidence and personal impressions. Thus a man who claims to foresee the decline of American civilization offers no original proof in the form of academic or scholarly research or investigative journalism to back up his weighty assertions. My impression is that his pessimism precedes his conclusions, thus invalidating them.
Rating:
Summary: Reasons Not to Read this Book
Review: 1) The bibliography reveals that Berman has not only not done any original research, but that has not even consulted the original sources of the sociological research he quotes, thus never evaluating the validity of the data. Instead, his sources are newspapers, magazines (esp., the New Yorker), a handful of books, and radio (esp. NPR). 2) Berman has conducted no extensive or original journalistic investigations of his own, e.g., has no exclusive interviews or significant firsthand experiences to offer. 3) Berman relies heavily on anectodal evidence and personal impressions. Thus a man who claims to forsee the decline of American civilization offers no original proof, academic research, or investigative journalism to back up his weighty assertions. My impression of the man is that his pessimism precedes his conclusions, thus invalidating them.
Rating: 
Summary: Those who do not know history¿. better get crackin'
Review: I know I've got a powerful work of non-fiction on my hands when I start writing down the names of other books the author refers-to. If you are a person who is captured by books, by ideas, and especially by their conjunction, you've probably noticed this same affinity for books that demonstrate the same pleasure in crediting their antecedents. My list for Berman's "The Twilight of American Culture" was a full page long! Let me say right off the bat, though - Berman is no William Bennett, muscling-in with his insistent, canonical listings or telling you precisely what your 6th grader needs to know (as a teacher I'm especially touchy about that one!). Berman does, in the end, articulate a powerful vision of the importance of being aware of some of the classic works of western culture. But along the way he takes a peek at everything from the movie "Blade Runner" to Don DeLillo's "White Noise" and Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz." Berman's claim boils down to "same old story" - civilizations, including ours, move toward decline. This is, itself, something that has been said many times before, back to Spengler and beyond, but Berman's telling is engaging in all sorts of ways. And his proposal for spanning the decline is unique. For one thing, Berman brings a clear-eyed directness to his extensive and eclectic description of the indicators of decline. He acknowledges the important efforts of many individuals to bring about change through personal transformation and grassroots activism, then replies "lets not kids ourselves: The ability of these sorts of approaches to significantly deflect the juggernaut of global corporate capitalism in a decade or two is non-existent." A central element of Berman's discussion is, indeed the role played by the corporatization of the planetary culture, the merging of corporate and adolescent ethics, the "culture of McWorld" as he and others have termed it. In this he differs from many on the political right who have called for a return to the traditional values of the "western canon" while shining the boots of corporate capitalism. Under this economic juggernaut Berman cites four factors that are present when a civilization collapses (a) accelerating social and economic inequality, (b) declining returns from investments in solutions, (c) dropping levels of literacy and general intellectual awareness and (d) spiritual death - packaging of cultural content in formulas, kitsch. Berman does not propose halting or reversing the decline he outlines, but he also does not propose despair. Instead he suggests that we learn from history that decline is sometimes followed by regrowth; that the pace of such rebirth has been hastened or delayed by the involvement of institutions that bridged the dark eras by carrying pieces of the old into the new. Berman proposes a similar "monastic" option with more than a casual nod to the uncertainty in either defining or accomplishing such an endeavor. If you've read lots of this sort of cultural history stuff you might find Berman's treatment glib - certainly not academic; and if you're hip-deep in counterculture you might already have worked out your own gloom and doom scenarios. But if, like me, you've got one foot in each world, only a glossing of classical education and an itching nihilism, this book might be the scratch you're looking for.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written but faulty analysis
Review: There is an entire genre of books devoted to the fall of the United States. At one time these books predicted the triumph of Communism and later books told how Japan would replace the U.S. as the number one economic power. These days the scenario for the America's demise is much less clear. Berman gets a lot of mileage out of comparing the United States to the Roman Empire. He says, for example, that like the last days of Rome, wealth in the United States is being more and more concentrated among the wealthy. This sounds a lot like Marx's prediction for the end of capitalism. The important difference between Rome and America is that the American economy is a market economy. The lesson learned from the Great Depression is that business suffers if not enough people can afford to buy the goods that they manufacture. The welfare state has built-in safeguards to prevent this from happening again. The argument against the collapse of capitalism can be put very simply: 1. People like material goods 2. Free enterprise overseen by representative government is the most efficient way of producing and distributing these goods A major problem with this book is that it ignores the importance of science and technology. Berman would have us believe that Rome's decline was linked to loss of rhetorical skills. The interesting question is not why Rome fell but why it was so successful for so long given that in the things that mattered - the production of food, clothing, shelter and weapons, Rome had a marginal advantage over its neighbors. Berman also ignores recent scholarship showing that the Dark Ages were not nearly so dark as previously believed. In their book Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel Frances and Joseph Gies show that during the Medieval period inventions from Asia were adopted and improved upon. It is the increase in living standards due to improvements in agriculture, the use of water and air power in manufacturing and the increase in trade that made the Renaissance possible. The decline in educational standards that Berman refers to is questionable. Americans have always been a pragmatic people - we know what we have to. Yankee ingenuity does not encompass knowledge of art, literature and philosophy. Americans garner a significant share of Nobel prizes and the American high tech manufacturing sector is second to none. American aesthetics has never been very prominent. Although many of us find it hard to believe, people are not forced at gunpoint to buy Big Macs or visit Disney World. The replacement of high culture by popular culture has been going on for quite a while and is likely to continue. The monastic life that is suggested, which seems to consist of reading the likes of Aristotle and Jane Austen, is not likely to happen. There are problems for industrialized nations that the book does not address. Most prominent is our dependence on non-renewable energy sources. Secondly, the peace, stability and comfort of wealthy nations raise questions about the meaning of life. These matters are discussed in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man which, although not as well written as this book, I would still recommend over it.
Rating:
Summary: Just ok...
Review: ...while I'm agreement with Berman's point of view on the state of American culture, there are much better books in the genre--several of which he quotes. For a thoughtful, considered approach, Sven Birkerts' "Gutenberg Elegies" is far superior--Birkirts analyzes, but does not offer far-fetched "solutions" such as the NMI (though he probably is one). On the other hand, if you're simply looking for a sympathetic rant, Paul Fussell's "Bad" for is much more entertaining and his "solution" to the problem is a more realistic way to not be a societal lemming.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading
Review: Thought provoking examination of the state of intellectual affairs as seen in pop culture. Lays out the present situation and tempts the reader to become part of effecting a solution. A call to arms for caring thinkers.
Rating: 
Summary: A little repetitive, but he adds mustard to the hot dog...
Review: I was taken in by Berman's "thesis" of American culture. He lays out what many of us already know: America is culturally vacuous. He adds that schools are a joke and dangerous, we jump on bandwagons at every turn, we imprison more people per capita than any other country, and we live on the glee and glitz of the latest prime time TV comedy. He goes on to explain how there is very little respect given these days to the individual, to the person who steps out and does things a little differently. People think Teams and Committees are the way to go, that teaching people how to use a computer is highly important (and it is if you want to get a decent pay check these days) so that they can fit in with everyone else... But, while at times he repeats himself a bit too much as he bashes the American culture, he does offer a nice chapter on how the non-mainstream individual can creap out of this cultural wasteland and live a life he/she truly BELIEVES in, a life that SPEAKS. He points out some people he believes "get it" such as filmmaker Michael Moore, and Earl Shorris who founded the Clemente Course in the Humanities (which teaches poverty stricken people how to "fight back," not by learning how to press keys on a computer keyboard, but by learning how to reflect on the world and getting political). Morris Berman altogether excited me and enlightened me and it is so re-freshing to read a book by someone who really does foresee where America is headed and how as individuals we can perhaps beckon a change.
Rating:
Summary: Clear and Concise
Review: Morris Berman sets out a clear and concise argument concerning the current state of American culture. His assessments and prescriptions, while sobering, contain a long-term hope. This book is for those who are looking for thought that is clearly expressed; that goes beyond the groupthink of the politically correct or the mind-numbing jargon of the academically postmodern.
Rating:
Summary: What Culture?
Review: This thought-stimulating book suffers from a certain lack of balance. In itself, the so-called "Twilight of American Culture" doesn't mean much on a global level, as long as other cultural centers, like Europe, Japan and China preserve their vitality. After all, there is little in the American Culture -- of which the author deplores the "twilight" -- that has not been historically imported from Europe and occasionally mishandled (maybe for this reason nobody really cares when the US media industry comes up with such an abomination as CD I recently saw in a music store: "Bach for Dog Lovers"). On the other hand, and very unfortunately, what the rest of the world perceives as genuine American Culture is exactly what Berman considers as symptoms of twilight. It would have been therefore quite relevant if the author had checked whether the entire "Western" culture was in crisis -- I don't see how the decline of the American culture in itself can be of any significance outside the Western system of cultural values, because let's face it -- culturally speaking, the US belongs to the periphery, not the center. The situation doesn't seem to be that critical in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Central Europe in general, and Scandinavia. Cheap US-imported commercial culture meets a certain serious resistance in these countries and elsewhere... The book though concentrates on the US, and this looks like its major flaw, IMHO; I opted for three stars only because the author is exceptionally honest.
Rating:
Summary: STARK BUT ACCURATE
Review: Morris Berman's brief and elegant survey of the cultural catastrophe we in these States are undergoing, and his relatively abstract proposal for living through it, impress me equally for their acuity and for their relevance. Berman has absorbed the lessons of Robert Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy, Empire Wilderness) and Immanuel Wallerstein (Utopistics, The End of the World as We Know It):he knows the enormity of the transition we face (he calls it the Great Collapse). His proposal for a radically individual-centered, quasi-eremitic response to our ambient chaos could be seen as destructive of the solidarities that seek to change things for the better. But ultimately, it is as individuals we must envision and enact whatever it is we are to do to live through this. If certain individuals find this involves networks of solidarity, participation in movements in civil society, let them recall the advice of Jung: "You can only come to an understanding of a collective movement, when you come to the understanding of your individual way within that movement". So Berman's paradigm of individuality is congenial, and his overview of our catastrophe is persuasive. If his faith in Enlightenment rationalism seems a little too exclusive (as though reason alone is to be trusted), his vitriol toward everything "New Age" a bit overdone (as though original spiritualities are inevitably bogus); these are but additional features of interest in a book that richly deserves to be read.
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