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BooksNovember 2009 Opiates for the last man A review of The Only Super Power: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism by Paul Hollander Paul Hollander’s latest book is an understated, wry, and often hilarious collection of reflections on the profound link between anti-Americanism and the delusions and desires stirred up by modernity. Consumerism and the worship of celebrity, vain status-seeking and the artificial cult of youth—all symptoms of a society in irreversible decline—share a common root with the professed discontent of what could be called the educated ape. Hollander’s book is rich in fact and vivid, direct observation; a sociologist by profession, he practices something close to the nineteenth-century Tocquevillean variety of the discipline and eschews the abstruse theory, do-goodin ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 28 November 2009, on page 68 Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Opiates-for-the-last-man-4322
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