false 30112 0895260786 9780895260789 479 163 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168051862m/30112.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30112.America_Alone_The_End_of_the_World_as_We_Know_It 16987 Mark Steyn 553 180 4 5 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat May 03 14:28:10 -0700 2008 Thu May 22 16:04:56 -0700 2008
1. The West is in demographic decline while Muslim nations breed at a far higher rate.
2. The West is too bulky with bloated government and social welfare programs that cannot be sustained.
3. We are too tired (what he terms "civilizational exhaustion") and ashamed of our greatness to do anything about it.

And if America cannot summon the will to shape the emerging world it will be the "end of the American moment." In the demographic section of the book he takes to task, time and again, the doomsday predictions of the ecochondriac crowd and overpopulation charlatans and points out that the granddaddy of root causes (demography) tells us our planet will be uninhabited before it is uninhabitable. It is human inventiveness that solves those problems and that is the commodity we are running out of.

The conceit of a book like this, in dealing with demographics, is its conclusions are premised on the idea that things will stay the same. But it is by far the funniest in the "death of the West" genre and my only complaint is lack of footnotes.]]>