| 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 |

Fifteen Dogs

AndrÃ© Alexis
Paperback / softback
176 pages
was: R 315.95
now: R 283.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock

A pack of dogs are granted the power of human thought - but what will it do to them? A surprising and insightful look at the beauty and perils of consciousness.

| more |

| add to trolley |

The Memory Collectors: A Novel

Dete Meserve
Paperback / softback
320 pages

Enquiries only

| more |

| enquire |

The Ballerina and the Bull: Anarchist Utopias in the Age of Finance

Johanna Isaacson
Paperback / softback
288 pages
was: R 321.95
now: R 289.95
This title will take longer to obtain, and should be delivered in 6-8 weeks

Our moment has seen the resurgence of an anarchist sensibility, from the uprisings in Seattle in 1999 to the Occupy movement of 2011.

| more |

| add to trolley |