| book details |

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions

By (author) Francis Wheen

This book is currently unavailable. Enquire to check if we can source a used copy

| enquire |

| book description |

An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century. An intellectual call to arms, Francis Wheenâ€™s Sunday Times bestseller is one of 2004â€™s most talked about books. 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 â€“ including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama Bin-Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer â€“ 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.

| product details |

| other options |

| back |

| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future

Mustafa Suleyman
Paperback / softback
352 pages
was: R 295.95
now: R 265.95
Stock is usually dispatched in 6-12 days from date of order

| more |

| add to trolley |

The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes

William Kelleher Storey
Paperback / softback
528 pages
was: R 425.95
now: R 382.95
Usually dispatched in 6-12 days

This first comprehensive biography of Cecil Rhodes in a generation illuminates Rhodesâ€™s vision for the expansion of imperialism in southern Africa, connecting politics and industry to internal development, and examines how this fueled a lasting, white-dominated colonial society.

| more |

| add to trolley |

Survive the AI Apocalypse: A guide for solutionists

Bronwyn Williams
Paperback / softback
232 pages
was: R 340.95
now: R 306.95
Stock is usually dispatched in 6-12 days from date of order

Look around you is anything real or normal any more? News, images and videos created by AI are everywhere.

| more |

| add to trolley |

The Memory Collectors: A Novel

Dete Meserve
Paperback / softback
320 pages

Enquiries only

| more |

| enquire |