In this radical account of the decline of twentieth-century American culture, Time art critic Robert Hughes insists that the politicization of almost every area of American culture has resulted in quarrelling, infighting, and a fall in the standards needed to hold such a diverse nation together.

Based on a series of lectures sponsored by the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press, Culture of Complaint asserts that the melting pot of America has never melted, and that American mutuality has always existed in a recognition of differences. The blame for the fraying of the American sense of collectivity and mutual respect is laid at many doors: demagogues who claim there is only one path to virtuous Americanness, multiculturalists who seek to rewrite history, advocators of political correctness, and sociologists who see the dysfunctional family as the cause of most personal problems. The book is an extraordinary statement of the times, and a clarion call for the rebuilding of America.