How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions [Hardcover]

'Wheen wears his considerable learning about Marx's career with the lapidary lightness of a fine columnist, and can be as witty and quotable as his subject.' Terry Eagleton, Observer

'Has such a passionate energy and commitment that made me cheer as I read it … Wheen's study is great fun, a bravura performance – well done yourself, I want to tell him.' Tom Paulin, Guardian

'Unmitigated delight.' Niall Ferguson, Mail on Sunday

‘I’ll read anything by Francis Wheen, and my trust was not misplaced: The simple elegance of the writing and Wheen’s ability to winkle humour out of the most unpromising subject, results in a book which is far more pleasurable than anyone had the right to expect.’ Nick Hornby, Guardian

The new book from the multiple-award nominated biographer of KARL MARX. Combine the intellect of Will Hutton, the campaigning vigour of Naomi Klein and the wit of Michael Moore and you have the ingredient of the next non-fiction polemical bestseller.

In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In Britain, an era of weary consensualist politics was displaced by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, whose ambition was to reassert 'Victorian values'. In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1,300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the twentieth century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History.

What colonised the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of mumbo-jumbo. Modernity was challenged by a gruesome alliance of pre-modernists and post-modernists, medieval theocrats and New Age mystics. It was as if the Enlightenment had never happened.

Francis Wheen, winner of the George Orwell prize, evokes the key personalities of the post-political era – including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama Bin-Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer – while charting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century. From UFO scares to dotcom mania, his hilarious and gloriously impassioned polemic describes a period in the world's history when everything began to stop making sense.

Francis Wheen is an author and journalist who was named Columnist of the Year for his contributions to the Guardian. He a regular contributor to Private Eye and is the author of several books, including a highly acclaimed biography of Karl Marx which has been translated into twenty languages. His collected journalism, Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies, won the George Orwell prize in 2003.