About the Book:This book compares the social decomposition in late medieval Europe to the societal failure witnessed today in the modern West, arguing that in the case of emergencies, a strong despotic state is the only way to maintain basic order. Shlapentokh asserts that asocial behavior (criminality, promiscuity, and anti-sanitary actions, as well as other aspects of social, political, and communal breakdown) in both medieval France and the contemporary West is not a marginal occurrence but rather a mainstream phenomena, and one that can often be stopped by strong force as the only antidote to social chaos. While the majority of Western (and particularly Anglo-American) scholarship dictates that Jeffersonian democracy will spread over the world, Shlapentokh argues that instead it is the precepts of Hobbes and Carl Schmitt that will shape the world to come.