The Decline of the West

By Oswald Spengler,

Book cover of The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality

Book description

The first volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West is a classic milestone in the annals of historiography. However, it is not a history book in the traditional sense of recounting events in chronological order. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why read it?

1 author picked The Decline of the West as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I first encountered Spengler’s theories in work by science fiction writers such as A.E. Van Vogt and James Blish, who were enticed by Spengler’s notion that there was no single history of human civilization. Instead, distinct “Cultures” were born and slowly decayed into mere “Civilizations” by roughly predictable stages. Each Culture began with a fresh way of seeing and conceiving the world and our place in it, expressed in new art, politics, technology, and even mathematics.

The original inspiration was then lost and replaced by merely imitative and rule-governed art and society. Spengler certainly got a lot wrong, but I…

Want books like The Decline of the West?

Our community of 11,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Decline of the West.

Browse books like The Decline of the West

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in civilization, the Mediterranean, and Western culture?

Civilization 224 books
Western Culture 55 books