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Mr. Brander explores the view that Western civilization is coming to an end, at least in the technological, materialistic, and expansionist form in which it has dominated the world for five centuries. He begins with a survey of some two dozen social thinkers who have sounded warnings of decline since the mid-nineteenth century, among them Tolstoy, Jacob Burckhardt, Henry and Brooks Adams, and Albert Schweitzer. Then, turning to the three greatest theorists of decline, he devotes the largest part of his book to an invaluable distillation of the monumental studies of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Pitirim Sorokin -- works of breathtaking scope and erudition. Though each of these thinkers approached his subject with the techniques of his particular discipline, the three shared a rare breadth and clarity of vision unencumbered by the ideology of progress. Readers who feel stranded in a painful and bewildering time, who wonder about the ongoing tidal wave of social change, will find in Staring into Chaos clarification of why change is occurring and where it might lead. And more importantly, they will find reason to hope for the rebirth of the West as a culture of truth and life.