Betting on Catastrophe

The smart money would bet that many of The University Bookman’s omnilegent devotees have already read The New Criterion’s fortieth anniversary essay series published over the course of 2022. But just in case they are wrong, Encounter Books has hedged their wager by reprinting the pieces in Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads. And who better than The New Criterion’s bench of deep thinkers to mull over James Burnham’s hypothesis—“Suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization”—with respect to Christendom’s funereal prospects. This timely collection explains the West’s historical path to self-destruction as well as its dreary prospects. Importantly, it dispenses with the despair that all too often vitiates conservative predictions of doom even if, as contributor Michael Anton predicts, “Going long on Wokemerica seems a sucker bet.”