How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern DelusionsPublicAffairs, 2005 M07 6 - 416 pages 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. |
From inside the book
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Page 26
... ideas and programs that formed the modern welfare state originated from the values of the right as well as the left , from the conservative religious impulse to defend the domain of family , community and church against the raw ...
... ideas and programs that formed the modern welfare state originated from the values of the right as well as the left , from the conservative religious impulse to defend the domain of family , community and church against the raw ...
Page 33
... ideas and conduct on the assumption that we were living in a New Era ; that old rules and principles and precedents of finance were ob- solete ; that things could safely be done today which had been dangerous or impossible in the past ...
... ideas and conduct on the assumption that we were living in a New Era ; that old rules and principles and precedents of finance were ob- solete ; that things could safely be done today which had been dangerous or impossible in the past ...
Page 38
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Contents
1 | |
9 | |
2 Old SnakeOil New Bottles | 39 |
3 Its the End of the World as We Know It | 62 |
4 The Demolition Merchants of Reality | 75 |
5 The Catastrophists | 113 |
6 With God on Our Side | 153 |
7 Us and Them | 161 |
8 The New Romantics | 178 |
9 Forward to the Past | 206 |
10 Voodoo Revisited | 238 |
Notes | 289 |
Index | 306 |
Other editions - View all
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions Francis Wheen Limited preview - 2005 |
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions Francis Wheen Limited preview - 2005 |
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions Francis Wheen Limited preview - 2012 |
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