When a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature writes about the history of political ideas, you get Albert Camus’s The Rebel. Published in 1954, Camus’s beautifully written book—which is not to say it is light reading—is one-stop shopping for those who want a history of modernity and the crisis of the West.
Today, we hear a lot about the fascism ostensibly stalking America. Writing less than a decade after the end of World War II, Camus observed that Hitlerism grew amidst despair. He took note that “the epidemic of suicides that swept through the entire country between the two wars indicates a great deal about the state of mental confusion.” Figure 1 in a just-released CDC report shows a disturbing uptick in youth suicide and homicide since 2014. On campuses throughout America, it is routine to hear administrators remind parents that college psychological counseling must happen in tandem with continuing care from their students’ own mental health professionals.
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