Over the years, Morris Berman has stood out as a sharp and original social critic, drawing connections between phenomena that apparently do not relate to each other, thanks to which he has created, like few contemporary authors, a map of the trajectory of the modern conscience and culture. In Neurotic Beauty, Berman minutely studies fascinating Japanese culture, to understand its place in today's world, and as a mirror in which Western culture itself reflects its deepest fears and obsessions.

From a new interpretation of crucial events like the atomic bomb detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as anchored in a scholarly review of the literature of and about Japan, Berman travels a broad spectrum that covers Japanese socio-political history, its complicated psyche, as well as cultural phenomena such as adolescents who lock themselves in their rooms for a decade. The result is an original look at one of the most emblematic millenary cultures, which leads Berman to the first alternatives for post-capitalist societies that will probably emerge in the centuries to come.