How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

Author: Francis Wheen
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0786723521
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
What characterizes our era? Cults, quacks, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of mumbo-jumbo, that's what. In How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, Francis Wheen brilliantly laments the extraordinary rise of superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria. From Middle Eastern fundamentalism to the rise of lotteries, astrology to mysticism, poststructuralism to the Third Way, Wheen shows that there has been a pervasive erosion of Enlightenment values, which have been displaced by nonsense. And no country has a more vivid parade of the bogus and bizarre than the one founded to embody Enlightenment values: the USA. In turn comic, indignant, outraged, and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World is a masterful depiction of the absurdity of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.

Idiot Proof

Author: Francis Wheen
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 9781586482473
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In America and Britain, an era of weary consensus was displaced by the arrival of a political marriage of fiery idealists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher transformed politics with a combination of breezy charm and assertive "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 colonized the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of idiocy, the proof of which was to be found in every state, every work-place, and every library. In Idiot Proof , columnist Francis Wheen brilliantly evokes the key personalities of the post-political era—including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama bin Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer—while lamenting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century. In turn comic, indignant, outraged and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, Idiot Proof is a masterful depiction of the daftness of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.

Summary of How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen

Author: QuickRead
Publisher: QuickRead.com
ISBN:
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 18

Book Description
Learn about the short history of modern delusions. In today’s era, we have experienced an epidemic of mumbo-jumbo as we see a rise in cults, gurus, irrational panics, and moral confusion. According to Francis Wheen, this mumbo-jumbo has conquered the world and created a society full of superstition, relativism, and emotional hysteria. We see this in Middle Eastern fundamentalism, the rise of lotteries, astrology and mysticism, poststructuralism and the Third Way. In the Western societies of today, people have become disillusioned with mainstream politics and inundated with “self-improvement” books which have now become an $11 billion industry. The country that has become the most displaced by nonsense is the one founded to embody Enlightenment values: the USA. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World aims to reveal how far the absurdity of our times has come and examines how many aspects of our lives are influenced by superstition and irrationality versus reason. As you read, you’ll learn about the rise of neoliberalism and how its policies created today’s income inequality and why self-help books rose in popularity in response to these policies. You’ll even learn about post-structuralism and progressive politics and discover why you should be skeptical of the language and rhetoric they use. Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original work. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended it to be. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and want us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].

The End of the World is Flat

Author: Simon Edge
Publisher: Eye Books (US&CA)
ISBN: 1785632531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
A satirical comedy featuring Christopher Columbus, a tech billionaire, and a global delusion. Mel Winterbourne is the founder of a small, single-issue charity in the obscure field of mapmaking. Its success in achieving modest aims attracts the attention of handsome tech billionaire Joey Talavera, who evicts Mel and hijacks her charity for his own ends: to convince the world that the earth is flat. Although his chances of doing so seem slim, Flat Earthery is an idea whose time has come. With the historical reputation of Christopher Columbus in free-fall, old-style 'globularism' becomes heretical for a new generation of angry, anti-Establishment free-thinkers. Teachers, politicians, and celebrities face ruin if they refuse to sign up to the new orthodoxy. For Mel, something must be done. Teaming up with a pariah tabloid journalist and a faded writer of gross-out movie comedies, she sets out to challenge Talavera and his deranged beliefs. Will history and the billionaire's own family origins be their unexpected ally? Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be much more relevant than you think.

Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia

Author: Francis Wheen
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007441207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Strange Days Indeed tells the story of how the paranoia exemplified by Nixon and Wilson became the defining characteristic of western politics and culture in the 1970s.

Karl Marx

Author: Francis Wheen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393049237
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Book Description
Looks at the life of the father of Communism focusing primarily on the human side of the man rather than his works.

The Threat to Reason

Author: Dan Hind
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789603994
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Today, media commentators, intellectuals and politicians declare that western science and rationality are threatened by irrational enemies. Evangelicals, postmodernists, and Islamists are on the march, they say. The Rome that science built is under siege. But there's a problem with these stirring attempts to defend the truth. They aren't true. In this urgent new book, Dan Hind confronts the great machinery of deception in which we live, and which now threatens to destroy our civilization. In particular, he takes to task a group of prominent intellectuals who have exaggerated the threat posed by the so-called forces of unreason-religion, postmodernism and other "mumbo-jumbo." The commentators, says Hind, distract us from much more pressing threats to an open democratic society based on freedom of speech and inquiry. This book shows that the real threats to reason aren't wacky or foreign or stupid; they reside in our state and corporate bureaucracies - and, one way or another, they probably pay your salary. In recovering the idea of Enlightenment, Hind explores its vital importance and reveals how it can help us to achieve a truly democratic politics, in which we have a genuine say in the decisions that are taken on our behalf.

Integrity

Author: Egil Krogh
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786733039
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
SOON TO BE AN HBO SERIES, "THE WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS," STARRING WOODY HARRELSON AND JUSTIN THEROUX In 1971, Egil "Bud" Krogh was summoned to a closed-door meeting by John Ehrlichman, his mentor and key confidant of President Richard Nixon, in a secluded office in the Western White House. Krogh thought he was walking into a meeting to discuss the drug control program launched on his most recent trip to South Vietnam. Instead, he was handed a file and the responsibility for the SIU, Special Investigations Unit, later to become notorious as "The Plumbers." The unit was to investigate the leaks of top-secret government documents, particularly the Pentagon Papers, to the press. The president considered this task critical to national security. Nixon said he wanted the unit headed up by a "real son of a bitch." He got the studious, zealous, and loyal-to-a-fault Bud Krogh instead. In that instant, Krogh was handed the job that would lead to one of the most famous conspiracies in presidential history and the demise of the Nixon administration. Integrity is Krogh's memoir of his experiences-of what really went on behind closed doors, of how a good man can lose his moral compass, of how exercising power without integrity can destroy a life. It also tells the moving story of how he turned his life back around. For anyone interested in the ethical challenges of leadership, or of professional life, Integrity is thought-provoking and inspiring reading.

Marx's Das Kapital

Author: Francis Wheen
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802143945
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
In vivid detail, Wheens captivating, accessible book shows that, far from being a dry economic treatise, "Das Kapital" is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved by the monster they created: capitalism.

The Quants

Author: Scott Patterson
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307453383
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubris, and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future. In March of 2006, four of the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them. They were accustomed to risking billions. On that night, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street. Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz--technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers--had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino. The quants helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. Few realized, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster. Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number-crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize--and wondered just how their mind-bending formulas and genius-level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast.