The Twilight of American Culture

American culture is in crisis, argues Berman, pointing out that ""millions of high school graduates can barely read or write""; ""common words are misspelled on public signs""; ""most Americans grow old in isolation, zoning out in front of TV screens""; and ""40% of American adults [do] not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II""--never mind that most students don't even want to learn Greek or Latin. Berman's lament that ""like ancient Rome [American culture] is drifting into an increasingly dysfunctional situation"" at first makes his book seem like a neoconservative treatise along the lines of the late Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. But Berman, who teaches in the liberal arts masters program at Johns Hopkins University, doesn't locate the cause of this malaise in multiculturalism or postmodernism, as Bloom did (although he is no fan of either one), but rather in the increasing dominance of corporate culture and the global economy, which he claims creates a homogenous business and consumer culture that disdains art, beauty, literature, critical thinking and the principles of the Enlightenment. Berman's provocative remedy is to urge individuals who are appalled by this ""McWorld"" to become ""sacred/secular humanist"" monks who renounce commercial slogans and the ""fashionable patois of postmodernism"" and pursue Enlightenment values. While Berman's eclectic approach often makes for engaging reading, his quirky and almost completely theoretical solutions are unlikely to galvanize many readers. Agent, Candice Fuhrman. (June)