| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

John Farrenkopf. Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics. (Political Traditions in Foreign Policy Series.) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2001. Pp. xvii, 304. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.

All the major works on Oswald Spengler—H. Stuart Hughes, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate (1952); Anton Mirko Koktanek, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit (1968); and now John Farrenkopf's book—see him as a prophet of our times. But the times have changed. Hughes and Koktanek placed Spengler in the intellectual and artistic currents of the turn to the twentieth century, the turn away from the Enlightenment; Farrenkopf, writing at the turn to the twenty-first century, views him from the perspective of the decade after the end of the Cold War, which had briefly raised the hopes that the world would follow the pattern of Western democracy and free markets. Farrenkopf's book, with its endorsement of Spengler's conclusion that "world history is ultimately irrational, destructive, and uncontrollable" (p. 283), could well have been written after September 11, 2001. . . .

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