The Decline Of The West (Abridged)

Product Descriptionsince Its First Publication More Than Eighty Years Ago, The Decline Of The West Has Ranked As One Of The Most Widely Read And Talked About Books Of Our Time. A Sweeping Account Of Western Culture By A Historian Of Legendary Intellect, It Is An Astonishingly Informed, Forcefully Eloquent, Thrillingly Controversial Work That Advances A World View Based On The Cyclical Rise And Fall Of Civilizations.This Abridgment Presents The Most Significant Of Oswald Spenglers Arguments, Linked By Illuminating Explanatory Passages. It Makes Available In One Volume A Masterpiece Of Grandscale History And Farreaching Prophesy That Remains Essential Reading For Anyone Interested In The Factors That Determine The Course Of Civilizations.Reviewprovocative And Often Dazzling. . . . An Exciting Excursion Through History. Timeaudacious, Profound . . . Exciting And Magnificent.The New Republicthis Grand Panorama, This Imaginative Sweep, This Staggering Erudition, This Nietzschean Prose, With Its Fine Color And Ringing Force, Mark A Work That Must Endure. The New York Sunwith Monumental Learning . . . Spengler Surveys Mans Cosmic March. . . . Always Forceful . . . Eloquent.The New York Timesabout The Authoroswald Spengler, One Of The Most Controversial Historians Of The Twentieth Century, Was Born In Blankenburg, Germany, In 1880. He Studied Mathematics, Philosophy, And History In Munich And Berlin. Except For His Doctors Thesis On Heraclitus, He Published Nothing Before The First Volume Of The Decline Of The West, Which Appeared When He Was Thirtyeight. The Agadir Crisis Of 1911 Provided The Immediate Incentive For His Exhaustive Investigations Of The Background And Origins Of Our Civilization. Spengler Chose His Main Title In 1912, Finished A Draft Of The First Volume Two Years Later, And Published It In 1918. The Second, Concluding Volume Was Published In 1922. The Decline Of The West Was First Published In This Country In 1926 (Vol. 1) And 1928 (Vol. 2); This Abridged Edition Was First Published Here In 1962.For Many Years Spengler Lived Quietly In His Home In Munich, Thinking, Writing, And Pursuing His Hobbiescollecting Pictures And Primitive Weapons, Listening To Beethoven Quartets, And Reading The Comedies Of Shakespeare And Molire. He Took Occasional Trips To The Harz Mountains And To Italy. In 1936, Three Weeks Before His Fiftysixth Birthday, He Died In Munich Of A Heart Attack.Excerpt. Reprinted By Permission. All Rights Reserved.Iintroductionin This Book Is Attempted For The First Time The Venture Of Predetermining History, Of Following The Still Untravelled Stages In The Destiny Of A Culture, And Specifically Of The Only Culture Of Our Time And On Our Planet Which Is Actually In The Phase Of Fulfilmentthe West Europeanamerican.Is There A Logic Of History? Is There, Beyond All The Casual And Incalculable Elements Of The Separate Events, Something That We May Call A Metaphysical Structure Of Historic Humanity, Something That Is Essentially Independent Of The Outward Formssocial, Spiritual And Politicalwhich We See So Clearly? Are Not These Actualities Indeed Secondary Or Derived From That Something? Does Worldhistory Present To The Seeing Eye Certain Grand Traits, Again And Again, With Sufficient Constancy To Justify Certain Conclusions? And If So, What Are The Limits To Which Reasoning From Such Premisses May Be Pushed?Is It Possible To Find In Life Itselffor Human History Is The Sum Of Mighty Lifecourses Which Already Have Had To Be Endowed With Ego And Personality, In Customary Thought And Expression, By Predicating Entities Of A Higher Order Like The Classical Or The Chinese Culture, Modern CivilizationA Series Of Stages Which Must Be Traversed, And Traversed Moreover In An Ordered And Obligatory Sequence? For Everything Organic The Notions Of Birth, Death, Youth, Age, Lifetime, Are Fundamentalsmay Not These Notions, In This Sphere Also, Po