A professor of religion at the University of Munich, Guardini was a firsthand observer of the wrenching changes that devastated European society in World War II and laid the foundations for what has been called our "postmodern" Western civilization. From that momentous experience he draws conclusions that challenge our assumptions about the human condition at the end of the second millennium.
The first book, The End of the Modern World, (from which this combined volume takes its title), examines life in the era of "Mass Man," the world in which mass-production, mass-communication, and mass-marketing threaten to crush individual character and initiative under "the power of the anonymous."
In the companion work, Power and Responsibility, Guardini extends his analysis to focus on our current ambivalence toward the nature, uses, and propriety of power.
It is the principle of individual responsibility that weaves these two books into a comprehensive and compelling moral statement. Guardini tirelessly argues that human beings are responsible moral agents, possessed of free will and answerable to God and their fellow man.