The Fall of Public Man (Open Market Edition) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Modern times are often compared to the years the Roman Empire went into decline: Just as moral rottenness is supposed to have sapped Rome's power..." (more)
Key Phrases: secular charisma, strong public life, ancien régime city, Forest Hills, New York, Century Paris (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the most stimulating and challenging books to be written in years. . . . A major attempt . . . to re-examine the assumptions and objectives of the 1960s and transcend them without compromising their ideals. One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination. . . . By all means buy this book and read it. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times )

Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society. Sennett's quest for the causes of the impoverishment of civil life in modern industrial society opens fascinating perspectives into the relationship between theater, politics, urban life, and the changing function of the family. (Carl Schorske, Princeton University )

[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does. (Robert Lekachman - Saturday Review )

Product Description

"Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society."--Carl Schorske, Princeton University. "Stimulating and challenging."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (June 17, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393308790
• ISBN-13: 978-0393308792
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #254,605 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intellectual Celebration Ranging from History toSociology, April 14, 2000

By	Serpil Tunçer (Turkey) - See all my reviews

Sennett scrutinizes those problems caused by the inbalance between personal and public life.According to Sennett, the 'public life' which is a significant piece of life besides the family and friendships was once so lively and meant much to individuals.There used to be a 'publicity' that contributed to the individuals' skills of 'play'through emotinal ties with strangers and to the civilization of the individual.Being a 'public man' well expressed in the 18th century European cities has become a gradually weakened phenomenon being replaced with the 'private life'.And has become as significant as the private life allows it to...Sennett asks,"How has the stranger been transformed into a threatening factor? How is it that today, keeping silent and remaining as the audience is the only way of joining the public life? In turn, how do these factors foster personality deficiencies? Solitude that is a result of modernism renders the individual a person captured by the private life.Sennett explains this process through works of Balzac and Diderot, theater, music, architecture,Dreyfus case and Richard Nixon. Richard Sennett is by no means hopeless; he is exploring the possibilites of getting to know 'the other' instead of imagining a 'lost public paradise'.

21 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The end of the public realm, January 3, 2000

By	Jorge Martins Rosa (Lisbon, Portugal) - See all my reviews

Beyond Habermas' description of the changes that have taken place in the Western public sphere, with a better emphasis on empirical and historical data, the book gives a detailed account on the rise and fall of our interacting abilities. From the marketplace to the theater, the 19th century (and then the 20th) saw the decline of «play», along with its replacement by vicarious figures, like the «genius», the performing arts «vedettes» and now the politician as someone who feels (and does) what we are not anymore able to feel. Instead of hysteria, the civilizational disease is now narcissism, the unableness to act regardless of one's inner feelings. To be read along with Sennett's other masterpiece, a romance entitled «Palais-Royal».