A broad, but easy reading, world-view of realities behind the anciently permanent traits of human behavior which cause simple societies to grow, to flourish in great civilizations throughout the world, and to collapse repeatedly, usually with much loss of the expanded populations. Both democracies and tyrannies follow that universal pattern into autocratic decay of civilized empires. This view leads to a search for critical factors that determine the beginning and course of the typical decays (which have already begun in modern democracies.) Invariably, all those great nations had strong religious and moral practices during their early growth to large numbers of vigorous people, up to the points of beginning the slide into collapse. All had strong leaders who escaped reasonable limits beyond their necessary uses. This book was written before the author's previously published, Headlong Into Quicksand - The Tale of Today in America -, and provided its basis and starting point.
