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By Eric Hoffer. Price, $.60 (paperback). Pp 160, with no illustrations. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 501 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022, 1951.

William B. Bean, MD, Reviewer

Arch Intern Med. 1966;117(4):588-589.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Every now and then somebody backs away from affairs and tries to work out an analysis of history or events, the basis of a new idea, or a discovery. There may be gold beaters, dead beats, beats, and beatnics. Historical postulates and themes of varying degrees of complexity and objectivity have been promulgated by Gibbon, by Toynbee, and by many others. In the Law of Civilization and Decay Brooks Adams took advantage of contemporary economic and financial studies and postulated that economic affairs are the most powerful agents in the evolution and, as he was so fond of saying, the decay of nations. Their decline, after reaching a pinnacle on the basis of the controlling of gold or other forms of money, is thought to represent the concentration of the fruits of myriad labors while the farmer-soldier, patriot-believer lost his independence as well as his function by putting down the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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