I will be using “postmodernism” throughout this book in the broadest possible sense, to name a mind-set, a worldview, or a family of similar worldviews, a set of perspectives shared by many people who have come of age rather recently. Postmodernism is not a theory or a creed: it is more like an attitude or a way of looking at things. It didn’t drop out of the sky—it showed up at this juncture in history, in Western culture, for specific reasons that have to do with the history of the West. Nor is