Includes bibliographical references and index.

Something rotten -- Anxiety -- Weakness -- Demographic worries, or the dearth of birth and its consequences-- Immigrants instead of children -- Something missing -- Apocalypse soon, or not -- They breed like-- -- Demographic counter-revolution -- Immigrants change -- Fun-loving Moslem women -- Fundamentally wrong -- The woman question -- Vive la differâence -- Summary and conclusions so far -- The role of relativism, moral and epistemological -- Come back, Descartes, we need you -- The attack on science -- The spread of doubt -- The multiculturalism of daily life -- Choice the highest good -- All options open -- Why are we like this (i)? -- A herd of individuals -- Secularization -- Life without transcendence -- A new pagan transcendence -- The transcendence of small causes -- Anti-nationalist transcendence -- A new identity -- Why are we life this (ii)? -- Everybody a community of identities -- The importance of national identity -- Persistent animosities -- The causes of peace -- German self-deprecation -- Common currency as a source of national antagonism -- What is it really all about? -- European Union as a pension fund -- Why are we like this (iii)? -- Doing their best for their electorates -- An experiment against reality -- Why are we like this (iv)? -- Patriotism and its discontents -- Nothing but-ism -- Problems in and with the past -- A change of meaning -- If that's what the victors thought, what about the defeated? -- Why are we like this (v)? -- Nothing but-ism revisited -- Last and best -- Vichy in the blood -- After liberation, massacre -- Unequal treatment -- We have no history -- Why are we like this (vi)? -- Why are we like this (vii)? -- Another way of being important -- The consequences -- The constructive urge is also destructive -- Hedonism at best, comfort at worst -- American envoi.