Part of a trilogy on civilization and its discontents, and on humanity's long struggle to master its instincts and the perils that attend that denial of human nature. This title contains essays on the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

The final piece, "Dionysus in 1990," draws on Freud and the work of Georges Bataille to link the recent changes in the world's economies with mankind's primordial drive to accumulation, waste, and death.