"The End of Ideology has been a landmark in American social thought, regarded even as a classic since its first publication in 1960. Daniel Bell postulated that the older humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exhausted, and that new parochial ideologies would arise.

In an essay new to the 2000 edition, he argues that with the end of communism, we are seeing a resumption of history, a lifting of the heavy ideological blanket and the return of traditional ethnic and religious conflicts in the many regions of the former socialist states and elsewhere.

Indeed, he argues that as the world undergoes greater economic integration, it is also experiencing great political fragmentation, as people retreat to more primordial units for the purposes of self-identity."--BOOK JACKET.