Is global capitalism on its last legs? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does Western civilization even deserve to survive as it is now? These are just some of the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009. In "Genius of the Beast", visionary thinker Howard Bloom takes readers on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present, presenting a radical new vision of capitalism and Western civilization. Arguing that underneath the economic mechanisms of capitalism lay hidden imperatives that have allowed man to create material miracles based on immaterial things, Bloom shows that what many believe to be the end of capitalism is merely the beginning.