ROBERT ZUBRIN: A Declaration of Decadence: Mary Jane Rubenstein’s real target in “Astrotopia” is not the corporate space race, but the very ideas of humanism and progress.

The French historian Fernand Braudel remarks in Out of Italy that “decadence” is what occurs in a civilization when it rejects the ideas and ideals responsible for its origin and growth. In her recently published book, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University, offers just such a bold rejection of everything that Western humanist civilization stands for or has ever stood for. If you think that the world has had quite enough of freedom, progress, science, and reason, this is the book for you.

It should be well-received in academia, then.