| How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions Contributor(s): Wheen, Francis (Author) |
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ISBN: 158648348X ISBN-13: 9781586483487 Publisher: PublicAffairs OUR PRICE: $20.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2005 Annotation: A savagely witty account of the last quarter century, when despite a great leap forward in technology there has been a huge, regressive collapse in our ability to think straight--so that everything has begun to stop making sense |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Modern - 20th Century - History | United States - 20th Century |
| Dewey: 909.82 |
| Physical Information: 0.89" H x 5.52" W x 8.26" (0.88 lbs) 336 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher 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. |