- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate; 2004 First Edition edition (2 Feb 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007140967
- ISBN-13: 978-0007140961
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.8 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 153,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Times
'Hugely enjoyable... delightful reading.'
Tim Adams, Observer
'Wheen has a Swiftian relish for exposing the cant that attends the 'new rationality''
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
83 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A small voice of reason,
By
This review is from: How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions (Hardcover)
From the first page this book promises a great deal: Francis Wheen sets out to show how society, both Western and Islamic, has determinedly squandered the benefits of the Enlightenment and has developed an astonishing hostility towards contemporary science and rational thought.Wheen paints a picture that is both amusing and chilling: our citizens and leaders are in the thrall of hocus and spin; educated people consume with gusto the diet of drivel served up in the media; an entire nation loses its grip after the death of a Sloaney princess; and post-modernists conjure with words to question the reality of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. This would have been a better book if Wheen had built on its early momentum and resisted the lure of diatribe, but there is such a surfeit of material to support his thesis, and so much nonsense routinely peddled by famous people who should have known better, that he seems unable to stop. The result is erudite and funny, but in the end this is a string of good journalism, rather than the serious manifesto that it might have been. I recommend this book, and I hope that Wheen will soon produce another edition that not only updates us on the progress of this human ship of fools (which seems daily to surpass itself in its vainglorious stupidity) but also lingers more on the questions why, and what needs to be done.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A much better book than its title suggests,
By The Navigator "thenavigator" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions (Paperback)
The title and the unhelpful "hilarious" quote from Paxman on the cover suggests this is all laugh a line, "news quiz" level of frippery.
Well it ain't. It's a fierce and cogent defence of enlightenment values and should be mandatory reading for this dim-witted age. To be fair to Paxman - it is also hilarious, it's just that's not the point of this splendid work.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More funny than informative.,
By Iphidaimos ""The History Man"" (Birmingham, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions (Paperback)
I thought long and hard about this review before making up my mind. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing since it appealed to my nihilistic nature, but it left me somewhat disappointed. It pokes fun at all the right targets - lefties without any discernable critical faculty, self-serving politicians, the relious dingbats, heartless big business, philosophers with all the common sense of a dead whelk and vacant-minded new agers - but somehow it seemed to miss the bulls eye. I suppose because it fails to offer any answers. Yes, mankind is superstitious, ill-educated and, for the most part, incapable of original thought, but the question remains - what can be done about it? My own feeling is that the answer is nothing, but if you're going to write a book on the subject then some sort of conclusion should be attempted. All we get is a sort of advertisement of Mr. Wheen's availability as an after-dinner speaker. I kept thinking about Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long in his novel "Time Enough for Love" - the story of an immortal who spends much of his time getting as far away from his fellow man as possible. Anyone want to sign up for the first colony on Mars?
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