Status Updates From Modern Times: The World fro...

Chapter 18: America’s Suicide Attempt takes us from postwar optimism to economic decline, tracing the nation’s rise and fall through the Great Society, Vietnam, and Watergate. Ambitious domestic programs and an education boom expanded government and expectations but often backfired, fueling welfare dependence, social unrest, and economic strain.

In Chapter 17: The European Lazarus, Europe rises from the dead after 1945—unexpectedly—having seemingly destroyed itself. Its revival is not driven by youth, rebellion, or radical ideas, but through steady, unglamorous leaders: Adenauer in Germany, De Gasperi in Italy, and De Gaulle in France. These men were old, religious, rule-bound, anti-utopian—yet they were the ones to resurrect Europe …

In Chapter 16: Experimenting with Half Mankind, Mao treats China as a giant laboratory, launching political experiments driven by ideology and willpower rather than reality—with catastrophic human costs. He dismantled authority, weaponized youth, turned ideology into violence, and turned personal vendettas into national terror. The Cultural Revolution was not an accident but engineered chaos, ending in exhaustion.