"... The picture [the author] presents of the United States may seem dismally pessimistic ... yet the book is of high importance for two reasons. First, it is not solely our own country which is herein portrayed and lamented. The author is attacking a deformity of the whole Western world--the materialism which, if continued, must dehumanize us ... The second reason ...is that although it is written in anger it is also written in compassion, and in the hope that man may still find his way home from the cheerless, airless, moon world into which the applied sciences have enticed him ..."--Intro., p. viii.