The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits

As the US becomes a second-place nation, can it shed the superpower nostalgia that still haunts the UK?

The debate over the US's fading hegemony has now raged and sputtered for 50 years, glutting the market with prophecies about American decline. In this short book, Jed Esty comprehensively surveys the field and marks its limits. While media elites obsess over how fast we will fall and how much we will lose, they ignore the fundamental question: What does decline mean? What is the significance, in experiential and everyday terms, in feelings and fantasies, of living in a country past its prime?

Drawing on the example of post-WWII Britain and looking ahead at 2020s America, Esty suggests that becoming a second-place nation is neither disastrous (as the hot alarmists claim) nor avoidable (as the cool optimists insist). Americans of all stripes and types have a deep habit of believing that their nation's destiny lies in the pursuit of global supremacy. But cultural habits can change. The Future of Decline argues that we can fight fading myths of dominance with new stories about life in a functional and decent society, freed from the burdens of superpower nostalgia.