The book's title refers to a farewell dinner at a posh New York City restaurant given for English philosopher Herbert Spencer on Nov. 8, 1882, at the end of an American speaking tour during which he promoted his views as social Darwinism.
Werth synthesizes without oversimplifying, and he rarely inserts his own opinions into the narrative. It is hard to find a more concise description of Spencer's worldview than this: "Spencer held that societies are organisms and that, like living forms, they evolve. He asserted a gradual evolution from primitive, less organized, to advanced, more organized, societies; and he maintained that as societies become more complex, and individual roles (and property) more varied, government must retreat from vast areas of social life so as to allow each individual to rise by his own exertions."
Spencer, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," is at the center of this multilayered tale, which encompasses an eclectic group of individuals including clergyman Henry Ward Beecher and industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
These men were among those who helped disseminate Spencer's individualist philosophy. These ideas were sometimes used to justify racial supremacy, an ironic development, given that some of Spencer's disciples were considered quite liberal. Beecher, for example, was an outspoken abolitionist and the brother of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Werth provides mini biographies of all the key players and describes their intellectual and personal interactions, though he often quotes too extensively from their works. The excerpts from Beecher's adultery trial - sometimes described as the O. J. Simpson case of its time - are so voluminous that the book reads like a biography of Beecher.
