The mystery of manic-depressive economies -- The birds and the bees of boom and crash -- How passions power the evolutionary search engine -- Truth in the corridors of power -- The greatest hits of history... and how they got to be that way -- The infrastructure of fantasy -- Jacking up the symbol stack -- The transcendence engine -- Emopower: the lift of generous selfishness -- An extra twenty years of life? -- Is gossip good for your health? -- The rocket fuel of empathy.

"Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of America leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009." "Howard Bloom has a radically new answer. In The Genius of the Beast, the author of the acclaimed books The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain insists that Western civilization has only begun to realize its full potential. Bloom argues that there's a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It's struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings. "Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race." "The Genius of the Beast takes the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call Western civilization. Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things - passion, persistence, and fantasy. Bloom shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning."--BOOK JACKET.