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Richard Sennett

The Fall of Public Man Paperback – April 11, 2017

by Richard Sennett (Author)

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A landmark study of urban society, reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication with a new epilogue by the author.

A sweeping, farsighted study of the changing nature of public culture and urban society, The Fall of Public Man spans more than two centuries of Western sociopolitical evolution and investigates the causes of our declining involvement in political life. Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

Print length

512 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

April 11, 2017
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

0393353745
ISBN-13

978-0393353747
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A powerful argument for a more formal public culture and a swipe against the rise of a self-indulgent counter-culture."
― Melissa Benn,, Guardian

"Brilliant. . . . One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett’s erudition, the reach of his historical imagination, the doggedness of his analysis."
― Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"Provocative. . . . Sennett brings us to an undeniably recognizable place, the contemporary urban scene."
― Richard Todd, The Atlantic

About the Author

Richard Sennett’s books include The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone, and Respect. He was the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and now teaches sociology at New York University and at the London School of Economics.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; 40th Anniversary edition (April 11, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393353745
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393353747
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #596,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #443 in Sociology of Social Theory
- #952 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #1,248 in General Anthropology

Customer Reviews:
29 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		64%
4 star		18%
3 star		15%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Philip G. Gleason

Street life

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2019

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Great review of how life on the city streets have changed.

2 people found this helpful

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Darko Lukic

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2016

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Like it because it's very wide presentation of topic

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Raindog

Moments of pure insight

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2018

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This book formed a cornerstone for my research into urbanity. Sennett has an ability to inspire with moments of pure insight whilst writing about everyday social encounters in cities that few other authors manage to achieve.

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David J. Hildreth

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2015

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READ THIS BOOK.

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Walter Cuje

Pseudo-academic gobbledy gook

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2020

This book is another academic exercise in saying things that sound meaningful, using sentences that are immune from interpretation, because their meaning is unclear, but sound "deep." Here is a sample: "The theory of expression is incompatible with the idea of individual personality as expressive. If the sheer recital of what I've seen, felt, experienced, without any filtering or shaping or falsifying of my experience to fit to a standard, if this were expressive, then 'pity' in my life can hardly be expressive in the same way to you as your own sense of pity, derived from different experience." Blah, blah, blah... The sum of the parts is zero. 400 plus pages that MIGHT have been a good 10-page magazine article, if the author could get to a clear point - though it's not clear if he even has one. He apparently was a student or peer of David Riesman, an equally lousy writer.

One person found this helpful

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Serpil Tunçer

An intellectual Celebration Ranging from History toSociology

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2000

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'.

45 people found this helpful

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Jorge Martins Rosa

The end of the public realm

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2000

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».

28 people found this helpful

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G. SPORTON

An education in itself...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 21, 2012

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I have only recently become a reader of Sennett's work (see The Corrosion of Character: Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism or Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Co-operation as further examples of his work that I have read recently, been impressed with, and has led me to seek out this book, which I seem to recall was recommended to me when I was doing my Masters nearly 20 years ago). In this book, from the 1970's, Sennett discusses the ways in which the presentation of self in the public domain has come to focus on personality, an insincere construct that so distorts feeling and emotional display that genuine expression seems no longer possible. To present his case, he reaches back into the French Enlightenment, particularly its theatrical tradition, to examine the erosion of a distinction between public and private, into the faux emotions of public figures that mislead us into notions of trust. This was an idea that must have been rather lively at the time the book was written, given Nixon's recent perfidious manipulation of public trust, and Carter's appeal as the righteousness mender of social and political wrongdoing as his sole qualification to the Presidency.

Sennett's success is difficult to gauge, given the broad range of evidence from which he can draw; a history of ideas about public and private conduct; his examination of the rise of psychology; and his astounding knowledge of theatre practice as an art and in its presentation to the public, are all enlisted in a critique of modern Western manifestations of public life. This is a very dense and difficult text, and Sennett further adds to the complexity through an appealing and credible ability to extend a given idea one step further, or to give it a polish to reveal something further than the satisfying aphorism from which he started. His contempt for the personal converted into currency for the public space is clear, but I am somewhat mystified as to why, or what alternative modern capitalism (his favourite target) might have thrown up (though as a Marxist, I suspect he doesn't think this would be possible).

What Sennett could not have foreseen is the way in which we are all now involved in these games, in the personal brand management through social media that removes our privacy by making us all into public figures in some way. To the modern reader, the playing out of his concerns since the time of writing is certainly alarming, and has me questioning my own public conduct (or as he might witheringly put it, my ersatz sincerity as only an expression of disingenuous attempts to be thought of as a feeling person).

6 people found this helpful

Georgios Metaxas

Soziale Verhältnisse

Reviewed in Germany on May 8, 2018

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Ich habe viel besser verstanden das was ich schon wüsste. Sehr empfelungswert in der Zeit von à la facebook etc Selbstdenunziations- und faschistoide Beobachtungsmechanismen.

One person found this helpful

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Wenwen

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2016

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Fair quality, readable.

Jimmy LaFleur

Seems Elaboratly Interesting

Reviewed in Canada on September 22, 2017

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Bought it after reading about it in Time Magazine. But never got to the point of reading it.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

great!

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Richard Sennett

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