The Death of the Grown-Up - by Diana West (Paperback)

About the Book

The Death of the Grown-Up is a provocative look at the rise of youth culture, the worship of perpetual adolescence, and the sorry spectacle of adults shirking the responsibilities of maturity. Firebrand conservative columnist Diana West looks at the mess America is in and wonders Where did all the grown-ups go?

Book Synopsis

A provocative look at the rise of youth culture, the worship of perpetual adolescence, and the sorry spectacle of adults shirking the responsibilities of maturity. Firebrand conservative columnist Diana West looks at the mess America is in and wonders Where did all the grown-ups go?

Diana West sees a US filled with middle-age guys playing air guitar and thinks No wonder we can't stop Islamic terrorism. She sees a landscape littered with Baby Britneys, Moms Who Mosh, and Dads too young to call themselves mister and wonders Is there a single adult left anywhere? But, the grown-ups are all gone. The disease that killed them was incubated in the sixties to a rock-and-roll score, took hold in the seventies with the help of multicultralism and left us with a nation of eternal adolescents who can't decide between good and bad, a generation who can't say no.

With insightful wit, Diana West takes readers on an odyssey through culture and politics, from the rise of rock 'n' roll to the rise of multiculturalism, from the loss of identity to the discovery of diversity, from the emasculation of the heroic ideal to the PC-ing of Mary Poppins, all the while building a compelling case against the childishness that is subverting the struggle against jihadist Islam in a mixed-up, post-9/11 world.

From the inability to nix a sixteen year-old's request for Marilyn Manson concert tickets to offering adolescents parentally-funded motel rooms on prom night to rationalizing murderous acts of Islamic suicide bombers with platitudes of cultural equivalence, West sees us on a slippery slope that's lead to a time when America has forgotten its place in the world. The result of such indecisiveness is, ultimately, the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Diana West serves up a provocative critique of our dangerously indecisive world leavened with humor and shot through with insight.

Review Quotes

"West writes with great flair. She has a columnist's talent for seizing arresting facts and locating the sort of outrageous incident guaranteed to make the blood boil." --The New York Times

"A serious work by an author highly engaged with the world in which she lives. West deserves to be heard." --New York Post

About the Author

DIANA WEST is a syndicated columnist whose essays have appeared in The New Criterion, The Public Interest, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Magazine, The Washington Times and The Weekly Standard. She has also written fiction for The Atlantic Monthly.