Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135718 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-21
• Released on: 2007-08-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
West, a Washington Times columnist with a hard-line conservative's interest in culture, sounds a dire alarm over an age she sees marked by the mainstreaming of countercultural behavior. An unprecedented reversal of priorities from parents to children has occurred since the 1950s, according to West, allowing for structural failures that permitted the behavioral revolutions of the 1960s to go forward unimpeded. To support her case, West draws on sources generally weighted to the right end of the political spectrum, like Robert Bork and Daniel Pipes. Her examination of the social repercussions of a new youth market would be better grounded within the context of the transformations in postwar American society, but she focuses instead on the negative aspects of these large and complex changes, without reflecting on her underlying assumptions. In her view, the prolonged adolescence of baby boomers has left America open to an insidious Islamization of culture via a misconceived political correctness that can't recognize the dehumanizing ideology of that religion. West, a vocal purveyor of distrust toward Islamic cultures, lays nothing less than the decline of Western civilization on the American counterculture, making her argument compelling only to those already in her corner. (Aug.)
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From Booklist
Writing in the Washington Times and elsewhere, West has proven to be a caustic critic of contemporary popular culture as well as a hawkish detractor of Islam. With this book, she fleshes out her archconservative worldview by arguing that today's popular culture is complicit in the threat posed to America by Islamic terrorists, and that the 1960s counterculture is to blame. In rejecting time-honored notions of adulthood (read: modesty, self-discipline, respect for authority) in favor of decadence and inclusiveness, she argues, the baby boomers inaugurated a culture of perpetual adolescence that erodes Western cultural identity. Channeling Samuel Huntington, West claims that this erosion of identity renders us incapable of countering potentially existing threats with adequate resolve and harshness. Although its first chapters weave together some anecdotal musings about the rise of youth culture, readers primarily interested in historical analysis might do better elsewhere. Readers seeking a sweeping polemic against the cultural Left, however, will enjoy this jeremiad's fiery indignance and playfully cutting prose. Driscoll, Brendan

Review
“Diana West’s analysis of American culture and society is filled with sharp insights and critical judgments that are illuminating and provocative. The Death of the Grown-Up delivers an honest perspective on the many forces and pressures challenging 21st century Americans.”
—Lou Dobbs, CNN

“The most intriguing question about American culture today--even more intriguing than, "When and why did men start to hug each other?"--is the question Diana West tackles in this penetrating and witty book: "When and why did Americans decide to stop growing up?" Actually, I have a depressing feeling that the two questions are related.”
—George F. Will ”This is a vigorously argued, far-reaching and timely book which should be read especially by those content to drift along with the noxious tide of fashion.”—Paul Johnson

“Diana West's brilliant and irreverent skewering of America's fixation on youth is a wake-up call for every individual who wants to see Western civilization endure. West makes the provocative case that a mass cultural obsession with perpetual adolescence has eliminated adulthood from the human experience, leaving our society effectively undefended as we confront the challenges ahead, especially the menace of Islamofascism.”—Tony Blankley

“With keen wit and unparalleled insight, Diana West traces the national decline of adulthood and the rise of the permanent adolescent class in American life. From James Dean to Elvis to Bill Clinton, from "anything goes" to "whatever," un-parents have succumbed to the Teen Age. But what makes West's invaluable analysis stand apart is her connection of the death of the grown-up to the post-9/11 political, intellectual, and moral paralysis that imperils us today. Her impassioned message: We cannot defend our identity if we have no clue about who we were and are and should be. We cannot defend our existence as long as we mollycoddle a generation of self-absorbed brats. West administers an overdue spanking to the cultural relativists: Wise up or we will all pay dearly.”
—Michelle Malkin
“This is a brilliant book that devastatingly dissects our politically correct society. In a book that will be read for generations, Diana West has written one of the most important books on our culture, politics and society that I have ever read. Diana has masterfully recognized and explained how certain trends within Western culture have fundamentally altered Western identity and weakened our resolve to combat a fierce enemy, radical Islam. A must read for anyone
who wants to understand why, all too often, many in the West are apologetic when confronted with the excesses of radical Islam and what we need to do to win the war on terror. This is a phenomenal book that will truly alter the way you view society. It is masterful.”—Steven Emerson

”Diana West has written a book not to be missed by anyone concerned about the future of America and the West. With wide- ranging scholarship and a lucid and sprightly prose style, she chronicles and analyzes the unprecedented transfer of cultural authority from adults to teenagers. The unhappy consequences range from the obliteration of traditional standards in almost all areas of life to a multicultural relativism that lowers our defenses against elements of a civilization that would destroy us. West has mounted a much-needed counterattack in the service of Western values and common sense.”—Judge Robert Bork

Customer Reviews

What does "Grown Up" mean today?
Ms. West really has a good topic, I just really wished she could have developed it more. In the first half of the book, she makes a great case for the "Death of the Grown Up". She traces the emergence of teenage culture back to the late forties, when the adolescent subculture began to have disposable income on a large scale. Since that time, the mass markets have cashed in by exploiting the nuances of teen behavior. This is all fine except that it appears that US teenagers have it so good that many refuse to grow out of it. Ms. West explores several main themes for this phenomenon which I found enlightening. For instance, if you've wondered why most television shows are written for the average 13 year old pubescent; why sportscasts are filled with endless ads for hair coloring, male enhancement, and rejuvenation schemes; why the term "adult" is a synonym for pornography; or why your neighbor's 30 year old son still lives at home, this may be the book for you. I only gave the book three stars due to the last half of the book. About midway, Ms. West appears to shift gears and go on a tirade against Islamic fascism, emphasizing how the Europeans are basically letting extremists take over their countries (because their leaders are all a bunch of wimps, presumably). This may be true, but I felt that the original premise of the book was displaced in favor of making a case against Islamic intrusion. Other than that, I enjoyed her insights and appeal for adults to start acting like "grown ups".

Has good points, but too often unbalanced and simplistic
In this relatively short (217 pages) book, Diana West argues that America and the West have been taken over by a cult of perpetual adolescence, which has lead to the death of grown up behavior, the end of critical thought and has gravely weakened our culture as we are being attacked by resurgent Islam.

I agree with the major thrust of her argument. I was not, however, terribly impressed with the book, for two reasons. First, these ideas are not new. Most of the main ideas here are, in my mind, far better explored in Mark Steyn's America Alone and Judge Robert Bork's Slounching Toward Gomorrah. She has some new insights, but not many.

Second, West covers a wide range of material, and she reveals a distressing ignorance and lack of balance in her discussion of most of them. Let me give two examples: American popular music and Islam. Her argument in both cases is simple, and inaccurate.

On music, she argues that, prior to the mid-1950s, we had good, complex, sophisticated adult-oriented jazz. At some point in the 1950s, the dam broke, the barbarians broke through and we had bad, childish, wildly emotional and out of control rock and roll. Of course, there is truth to this viewpoint. However, it is a more complex than that, and West misses all of the complexity. She is unaware that rock n roll, as we knew it in the 1960s and 1970s, is basically dead, and has been replaced by rap, which is a very different art form than rock. She also has no appreciation for how country music has developed in the last thirty years, becoming at one and the same time the musical heir of 1970s rock and in its lyric content a dramatic alternative to rap. While country music certainly has many anthems to the joys of unending adolescence and teenage rebellion, it also has many defenses of tradition and tributes to adult behavior, from Merle Haggard's clasic defense of traditional values, Okie from Muskoggee or today's country hit, Alan Jackson's, Small Town Country Man. On the whole, country has a similar level of adult sophistication to that of jazz, bearing in mind that jazz certainly had its share of boozy songs in favor of sex and drinking, as well as sophisticated explorations of adult emotion.

On Islam, West's basic argument is that a good Muslim is a dead Muslim. In her view, Islam is a totally aggressive, totally barbaric attacking force, with zero separation of Church and State and zero chance of reforming itself. She sees moderate Islam as a fantasy and Bush as delusional in attempting to bring democracy to the Middle East. She does not say how we should respond to Islam, but the logical consequence of her argument is we will have unending war with Islam until either Islam is destroyed or the West is destroyed. Again, there is certainly truth to her argument, but she misses a tremendous amount. She says that Islam has no tradition of separation of Church and State. What about the Republic of Turkey, which has had a radically secular government since the aftermath of World War One? What about the Kurds, who welcomed liberation from Saddam Hussein and created a peaceful, stable enclave in northern Iraq?

In the end, West seems to me a victim of the pathology she describes. Adults are able to see the world in complex, nuanced terms. Children tend to see everything as black and white. Measured by that standard, West is herself not especially adult in her thinking.

Logically deficient, culturally biased arguments
This book is riddled with logical fallacies and culturally biased expectations of how people "should" act without corresponding explanations of why these types of social structures are the only representations of "grown-up" behavior. Instead of making well-thought out logical arguments, Diana West singles out and fixates on particular events as evidence of widespread chaos and the disintegration of society, and beats readers over the head with self-evident truisms that don't really reflect any sort of logic or rational thought processes so much as personal political and moralistic agendas. She takes these rather oppressive self-righteous convictions and complains that people who don't adhere to these arbitrary behavioral guidelines and belief structures are destroying America. This somewhat masturbatory screed does not offer sound reasoning, does not pose convincing arguments, and it's very tiresome to read. It is any wonder she got hired at Fox News?