In the late 60s, having just returned from my stint in the military service, I returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and found a nice Berkeley brown-shingle on Spruce Street for an accommodation, as I began a two-pronged path, one towards completion of my undergraduate degree and the second as a cardiovascular tech at what is now Summit Medical Center (on the Berkeley/Oakland boundary line). As a young man who wasn’t having my educational costs paid for by a well-off family, I could not immerse myself fully in student affairs at Cal Berkeley and necessity dictated that I remain a leftist sympathiser who stayed somewhat removed from the radical demonstrations that were gaining full strength in the early 70s (such as the Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights extremism, both of which were then at the forefront of Bay Area activism). It simply wouldn’t do to get arrested at demonstrations (and possibly jailed with a criminal record) as a working and ‘properly responsible’ member of the medical establishment. I was, of course, well-aware of all that was going on, including the Black Panther movement, Angela Davis’s involvement at the Marin Courthouse shootings and related activist causes. In fact, when the FBI stormed the Black Panther Headquarters on then Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Avenue), I had moved into an apartment directly across the street from them and was wakened from a sound sleep (after a night-shift at the hospital) by volleys of gunfire therefrom. I cite this merely as evidence that I ‘lived’ that period as fully as one reasonably could, short of direct activist involvement. Very recently, as a voracious reader, I picked up a copy of Christopher F. Rufo’s recent (2023) hardbound book titled ‘America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything’ (Barnes & Noble) and began to make my way through it. It isn’t exaggerating to say that the epiphany its contents conferred upon me was somewhat like the brilliant light of a thermonuclear bomb going off directly overhead. 55 years after my erstwhile ‘lived-experience’ as a left-leaning student on Sproul Plaza, the full context of exactly what was occurring then finally dawned on me. Such are the benefits (hopefully) of a long life and many experiences along the way. Most individuals of average intelligence have heard the name ‘Marcuse’ dropped here and there, from time to time, in association with Marxism and intellectualism, but I’d posit that few, if many, are fully apprised of exactly who Herbert Marcuse (a German national and intellectual theorist of the so-called ‘Frankfurt Circle’) was and what his connection with Marxist thought actually consisted of. Rufo’s excellent and cogently written book (an explanation of how the so-called ‘Radical Left’ has subsumed ‘traditional’ American democracy, from the highest to the lowest levels of society, and managed not just to permeate it but control it utterly) fully details (Marcuse himself died in 1979 of the effects of a stroke, at the age of 81) Marcuse’s ‘critical theories’, as adopted by today’s ‘Radical Left’, as the core of contemporary radical leftist thought. The book also includes a rather detailed background on Angela Davis, who was closely involved with the Black Panthers back when I was a Berkeleyite, black intellectual and Marxist, who was a student of Marcuse and a dedicated, life-long follower of his Marxist teachings. The complex backstory of how the Radical Left came to the forefront of America’s educational and corporate thought is indeed that, complicated, but Rufo has succeeded in dissecting and explaining in his book how Marcusian ‘critical theories’ have since been translated into racial identity dogma (e.g. CRT, ‘systemic racism’ and DEI) and taken root within our universities, our government and the corporations…all three of which exert a huge influence on our collective national awarenesses today. Moreover, Rufo has successfully authored a book that is extremely well organised and eminently readable, as well. This is a book that puts it all together for anyone who now wonders why traditional American democracy has suffered such catastrophic damage over the past decade or so. It is also a book that everyone, even those who aren’t typically ‘readers’, should take a close look at. Christopher Rufo is not an ‘ivy-tower’ academic, elitist intellectual; he is instead an incredibly cogent and articulate analyst in the area of contemporary American social philosophy (holding a Master’s Degree from Harvard University) who carefully dissects the pervasive dogmas of ‘systemic racism’, ‘Critical Race Theory’, and ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ in the 4-part, 340 page work, and lays it all out for us in readily graspable concepts. After finishing this book, almost anyone can understand exactly how Herbert Marcuse plotted the course that today has led to a near-total takeover of A) America’s educational system, B) the commercial corporations (that exert powerful influence over the consumer public), and C) the State itself (and all its institutions and bureaucratic subdivisions). Marcuse’s ‘revolution’ failed utterly in the late 60s and early 70s, but his trailblazing theories prepared the way and marked the path for his successors to bring them to life, not unlike Dr. Frankenstein’s mythical experiments in reanimation of life did. Revolutions aren’t always bloody and violent. Sometimes they are far more subtle and serpent-like in their promulgations. Rufo didn’t say it, but Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana did, in reminding us that lessons unlearned in the past perpetuate cyclical repetitions in the future. Unless Americans strive to regain their critical thinking ability and read books such as this, American democracy as we know it is unquestionably doomed. Perhaps another way to put it is this observation by late-19th Century French polymath, Gustave Le Bon: “Weak minds are easily led…”