{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,2]],"date-time":"2026-06-02T11:07:52Z","timestamp":1780398472969,"version":"3.54.1"},"publisher-location":"Earth, Milky Way","edition-number":"1","reference-count":0,"publisher":"punctum books","isbn-type":[{"value":"9780692725474","type":"print"},{"value":"9780692725474","type":"electronic"}],"license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2016,5,30]],"date-time":"2016-05-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1464566400000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2016,5,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\u201cThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold.\u201d These words from Yeats\u2019s poem \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d provide Why the Center Can\u2019t Hold with its organizing theme. And although Yeats was describing the grim atmosphere of post-World War I Europe, O\u2019Neill regards the poem\u2019s pronouncements as eerily predictive of the state of the world as we are currently observing it. O\u2019Neill takes them as predictive of the agency in particular of the United States\u2014the \u201cCenter\u201d\u2014in bringing about in the world the more general chaos we are now observing (relative to various refugee and migrant crises, the emergence of sophisticated and even postmodern forms of militant and cyber terrorism, banking and other monetary crises, environmental catastrophes under the aegis of climate change, the defunding of public higher education, the persistence of virulent forms of racism and other types of intolerance, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the marginalisation and even outright elimination of human labor forces, etc.). O\u2019Neill provides historical analyses that illuminate why this is the case, and he also asks what changes in the United States \u2014 in its politics, in its socio-cultural formations, and in its beliefs and (supposedly common) values \u2014 might help us to avoid the inevitable (and lamentable) destruction that seems ahead<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.21983\/p3.0142.1.00","type":"monograph","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,29]],"date-time":"2025-04-29T17:55:09Z","timestamp":1745949309000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Why the Center Can't Hold"],"prefix":"10.21983","author":[{"given":"Tom","family":"O\u2019Neill","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"31179","container-title":[],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/books.punctumbooks.com\/10.21983\/P3.0142.1.00.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/books.punctumbooks.com\/10.21983\/P3.0142.1.00.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,2]],"date-time":"2026-06-02T10:13:04Z","timestamp":1780395184000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/punctumbooks.com\/titles\/why-the-center-cant-hold\/"}},"subtitle":["A Diagnosis of Puritanized America"],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2016,5,30]]},"ISBN":["9780692725474","9780692725474"],"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.21983\/p3.0142.1.00","relation":{"is-identical-to":[{"id-type":"doi","id":"10.1353\/book.76509","asserted-by":"subject"}]},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2016,5,30]]}}}