Books like Are We Rome? by Cullen Murphy

In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama argues that liberal democracy will become the final form of human governance and examines the societal consequences of this inevitable transition.

Joseph A. Tainter examines how complex, post‑hunter‑gatherer societies deteriorate when the costs of managing social, economic, and political organization outpace the benefits they provide.

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarching crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.From the Hardcover edition.

Argues that the United States is both economically and militarily the most powerful empire in history and will feel negative consequences as a result of imposing unrealistic timescales on interventions abroad.

Yoram Hazony argues that sovereign nations are essential for preserving personal and collective freedom, tracing the historical roots of nationalism from the 16th century to modern struggles for self‑determination.

Andrew Delbanco traces the spiritual and national symbols that have shaped American aspirations from early English settlements to today, exploring how Protestantism, nation‑state myth, and modern decline influence contemporary longing.

An examination of how America’s lesser‑known imperial wars, rather than the Revolutionary and Civil Wars or WWII, have shaped U.S. society and territorial expansion.