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Idiot Proof: A Short History Of Modern Delusions
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 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.
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.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2004
87 people want to read
About the author
Francis Wheen
27 books85 followersFrancis James Baird Wheen (born 22 January 1957) is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster.
Wheen was educated at Copthorne Prep School, Harrow School and Royal Holloway College, University of London. At Harrow he was a contemporary of Mark Thatcher who has been a recurring subject of his journalism.[citation needed] He is a member of the 'soap' side of the Wheen family, whose family business was the long-established "Wheen & Sons", soap-makers, as was revealed in the gossip column of the Daily Mail on 26 March 2007. He was married to the writer Joan Smith between 1985 and 1993.
He is the author of several books including a biography of Karl Marx, which won the Isaac Deutscher prize. A column for The Guardian ran for several years. He writes for Private Eye and is the magazine's deputy editor. His collected journalism – Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies won him the George Orwell Prize in 2003. He has also been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard.
Wheen broadcasts regularly (mainly on BBC Radio 4) and is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, in which he often referred to the fact that he resembles the former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith. He is also one of the more frequently recruited guests for Have I Got News For You.
Wheen wrote a docudrama, The Lavender List, for BBC Four on the final period of Harold Wilson's premiership, concentrating on his relationship with Marcia Williams, which was first screened in March 2006. It starred Kenneth Cranham as former Prime Minister Wilson and Gina McKee as Williams. In April 2007 the BBC paid £75,000 to Williams (Baroness Falkender) in an out-of-court settlement over claims made in the programme.
Francis Wheen is a signatory to the Euston Manifesto and a close friend of Christopher Hitchens. In late-2005 Wheen was co-author, with journalist David Aaronovitch and blogger Oliver Kamm, of a complaint to The Guardian after it published a correction and apology for an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes. Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The writer Diana Johnstone also complained about references to her in the interview. The Guardian's then readers' editor Ian Mayes found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting the argument.
Wheen was educated at Copthorne Prep School, Harrow School and Royal Holloway College, University of London. At Harrow he was a contemporary of Mark Thatcher who has been a recurring subject of his journalism.[citation needed] He is a member of the 'soap' side of the Wheen family, whose family business was the long-established "Wheen & Sons", soap-makers, as was revealed in the gossip column of the Daily Mail on 26 March 2007. He was married to the writer Joan Smith between 1985 and 1993.
He is the author of several books including a biography of Karl Marx, which won the Isaac Deutscher prize. A column for The Guardian ran for several years. He writes for Private Eye and is the magazine's deputy editor. His collected journalism – Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies won him the George Orwell Prize in 2003. He has also been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard.
Wheen broadcasts regularly (mainly on BBC Radio 4) and is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, in which he often referred to the fact that he resembles the former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith. He is also one of the more frequently recruited guests for Have I Got News For You.
Wheen wrote a docudrama, The Lavender List, for BBC Four on the final period of Harold Wilson's premiership, concentrating on his relationship with Marcia Williams, which was first screened in March 2006. It starred Kenneth Cranham as former Prime Minister Wilson and Gina McKee as Williams. In April 2007 the BBC paid £75,000 to Williams (Baroness Falkender) in an out-of-court settlement over claims made in the programme.
Francis Wheen is a signatory to the Euston Manifesto and a close friend of Christopher Hitchens. In late-2005 Wheen was co-author, with journalist David Aaronovitch and blogger Oliver Kamm, of a complaint to The Guardian after it published a correction and apology for an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes. Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The writer Diana Johnstone also complained about references to her in the interview. The Guardian's then readers' editor Ian Mayes found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting the argument.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 3, 2019
"The sleep of reason brings forth monsters"
I've read a number of books* exposing quackery, fake science, business and political fraud, deluded celebrities, lying politicians, the gullible and superstitious public, and the like, and I've enjoyed almost all of them. What sets this book by Francis Wheen, who is a columnist for the London Guardian, apart from the others is the literary quality of his writing and his sharp cultural insight. Wheen knows how to turn a phrase, he knows how to be expressive in an effective manner and he knows how to delight the reader with exactly the right barb delivered at exactly the right target with panache and style. For example:
Commenting on a satire of self-help books (especially Deepak Chopra's) by comic writers Christopher Buckley and John Tierney ("If God phones, take the call"; "Money is God's way of saying 'Thanks'!"), Wheen observes that their satires "serve only to confirm that the genre is beyond parody..." He goes on to say that their second satirical law, "God loves the poor, but that doesn't mean He wants you to fly coach" is not more "hilariously absurd" than Chopra's "People with wealth consciousness settle only for the best. This is also called the principle of highest first. Go first-class all the way and the universe will respond by giving you the best." (p. 47)
Reacting to "post-modern anti-scientific relativism," Wheen apprehends that "For those who regard rationality itself as a form of oppression...there is no reason why scientific theories and hypotheses should be 'privileged' over alternative interpretations of reality such as religion or astrology." (p. 98) Later he refers to "the enfeebling legacy of post-modernism--a paralysis of reason, a refusal to observe any qualitative difference between reasonable hypotheses and swirling hogwash." (p. 111) This is similar to Bertrand Russell's observation, "Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific" (as quoted on page 98).
If only this truth could be more universally realized!
On the newfangled terminology of the creationists, Wheen notes that they have "adopted a more scientific-sounding phraseology--'abrupt appearance theory,' 'intelligent-design theory'--to disguise the fact that their only textbook was the Old Testament." (p. 100)
Incidentally the quote in my subject line ("The sleep of reason brings forth monsters") is from page seven where Wheen identifies the monsters as both "manifestly sinister" (try Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Osama Bin Laden and other fundamentalists) and "merely comical" (e.g., Nancy and Ronald Reagan and their reliance on astrology). By the way, I lump Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Osama Bin Laden together because of this pronouncement from the TV evangelists just two days after 9/11: "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." So spoke Rev. Falwell. He attributed the mass murders to God's wrath at "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians...the ACLU, People for the American Way, all...who try to secularize America." Rev. Robertson responded with a forthright, "I totally concur." (p. 177, and widely reported in the media).
Wheen's point is that as rationality goes out the window--and there is increasing evidence, a lot of it presented here, that much of the world has indeed abandoned reason in favor of unreason and religious superstition--monstrous ideas and personages come flying in. It is ironic in an almost cosmic sense that in the modern world, a world equipped with the stupendous tools of science and technology, most people still follow Bronze Age gods and think like the uneducated followers of warlords and tribal chieftains.
A nice way to sum up Wheen's thesis is this quote from Salman Rushdie: "In one pan of the scales we now have General Relativity, the Hubble Telescope and all the imperfect but painstakingly accumulated learning of the human race, and, in the other, the Book of Genesis." (p. 101)
Needless to say this book will not sit well with a lot of people. Wheen not only slaughters sacred cows, but attacks the bozos on both sides of the political aisle. His critique of idiocy in the Bush and Blair administrations (in addition to his frequent recall of the voodoo delusions of Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan) is to be expected of course, but his devastating devaluation of Bill Clinton comes as something of a surprise. Here he is on the man who would redefine the meaning of "is": "...a man of no discernible moral scruples who in 1992 interrupted his primary campaign and hastened back to Arkansas to execute a brain-damaged black man, Rickey Ray Rector, solely to forestall any suspicion that he was soft." (p. 191)
Add this to the delight that Wheen takes in going after beloved cultural icons like Princess Diana and one sees why some reviewers do not like this book. Ignore them. True, Wheen wanders about in idiot land indiscriminately at times, and indeed has pasted together his anti-enthusiasms in places like a patchwork quilt; but his keen lambasting of the spouters of what Bob Dylan called "the idiot wind" is well worth the price. Bottom line: this book is a lot of fun to read.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
I've read a number of books* exposing quackery, fake science, business and political fraud, deluded celebrities, lying politicians, the gullible and superstitious public, and the like, and I've enjoyed almost all of them. What sets this book by Francis Wheen, who is a columnist for the London Guardian, apart from the others is the literary quality of his writing and his sharp cultural insight. Wheen knows how to turn a phrase, he knows how to be expressive in an effective manner and he knows how to delight the reader with exactly the right barb delivered at exactly the right target with panache and style. For example:
Commenting on a satire of self-help books (especially Deepak Chopra's) by comic writers Christopher Buckley and John Tierney ("If God phones, take the call"; "Money is God's way of saying 'Thanks'!"), Wheen observes that their satires "serve only to confirm that the genre is beyond parody..." He goes on to say that their second satirical law, "God loves the poor, but that doesn't mean He wants you to fly coach" is not more "hilariously absurd" than Chopra's "People with wealth consciousness settle only for the best. This is also called the principle of highest first. Go first-class all the way and the universe will respond by giving you the best." (p. 47)
Reacting to "post-modern anti-scientific relativism," Wheen apprehends that "For those who regard rationality itself as a form of oppression...there is no reason why scientific theories and hypotheses should be 'privileged' over alternative interpretations of reality such as religion or astrology." (p. 98) Later he refers to "the enfeebling legacy of post-modernism--a paralysis of reason, a refusal to observe any qualitative difference between reasonable hypotheses and swirling hogwash." (p. 111) This is similar to Bertrand Russell's observation, "Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific" (as quoted on page 98).
If only this truth could be more universally realized!
On the newfangled terminology of the creationists, Wheen notes that they have "adopted a more scientific-sounding phraseology--'abrupt appearance theory,' 'intelligent-design theory'--to disguise the fact that their only textbook was the Old Testament." (p. 100)
Incidentally the quote in my subject line ("The sleep of reason brings forth monsters") is from page seven where Wheen identifies the monsters as both "manifestly sinister" (try Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Osama Bin Laden and other fundamentalists) and "merely comical" (e.g., Nancy and Ronald Reagan and their reliance on astrology). By the way, I lump Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Osama Bin Laden together because of this pronouncement from the TV evangelists just two days after 9/11: "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." So spoke Rev. Falwell. He attributed the mass murders to God's wrath at "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians...the ACLU, People for the American Way, all...who try to secularize America." Rev. Robertson responded with a forthright, "I totally concur." (p. 177, and widely reported in the media).
Wheen's point is that as rationality goes out the window--and there is increasing evidence, a lot of it presented here, that much of the world has indeed abandoned reason in favor of unreason and religious superstition--monstrous ideas and personages come flying in. It is ironic in an almost cosmic sense that in the modern world, a world equipped with the stupendous tools of science and technology, most people still follow Bronze Age gods and think like the uneducated followers of warlords and tribal chieftains.
A nice way to sum up Wheen's thesis is this quote from Salman Rushdie: "In one pan of the scales we now have General Relativity, the Hubble Telescope and all the imperfect but painstakingly accumulated learning of the human race, and, in the other, the Book of Genesis." (p. 101)
Needless to say this book will not sit well with a lot of people. Wheen not only slaughters sacred cows, but attacks the bozos on both sides of the political aisle. His critique of idiocy in the Bush and Blair administrations (in addition to his frequent recall of the voodoo delusions of Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan) is to be expected of course, but his devastating devaluation of Bill Clinton comes as something of a surprise. Here he is on the man who would redefine the meaning of "is": "...a man of no discernible moral scruples who in 1992 interrupted his primary campaign and hastened back to Arkansas to execute a brain-damaged black man, Rickey Ray Rector, solely to forestall any suspicion that he was soft." (p. 191)
Add this to the delight that Wheen takes in going after beloved cultural icons like Princess Diana and one sees why some reviewers do not like this book. Ignore them. True, Wheen wanders about in idiot land indiscriminately at times, and indeed has pasted together his anti-enthusiasms in places like a patchwork quilt; but his keen lambasting of the spouters of what Bob Dylan called "the idiot wind" is well worth the price. Bottom line: this book is a lot of fun to read.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
May 7, 2017
Glad I have finished it. Brought up some interesting issues and analyzed them, historical and political, but not something I would care to read again.
September 2, 2016
Rants on and on about the waning of the enlightenment and rational thought. I agreed with him mostly, but it was tiring reading page after page of the rants. Some targets were too easy. (Really? Politicians will tell white lies in pursuit of votes? Post-modernists are wacko?) Hits the right and the left about equally hard.
OK, this is really weird. I had this written down on my list of books to read, under "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World." That seems to be the name of the book in Britain.
Somehow, after I read it in 2008, I did not delete it from my list. And so I came around to read it again in January, 2014. With no recollection of my earlier reading. I liked it much less the second time through (as evidenced in my review below).
Idiot Proof is the American name of this book (which is why it took me so long to find it). I wanted to like it. Somehow I had it listed as "science-y." I thought it would be something like Sagan's "A Demon Hauted World." It was a long lament (rant, really) about modern day folk being anti-"thinking". (For Sagan, that's anti-science, for Wheen it's anti-enlightenment.)
One problem I had with the actual book is that he chose the lowest-hanging fruit: deconstuctionists, self-help books, Fukuyama ("The End of History"), Chomsky, and so on. They're just too easy to satirize. He didn't really offer any solutions, just ranting.
He did a long rant about Enron and how everybody loved them. Until. Well, yeah, it does look bad in retrospect. Perhaps, though, he could offer a prediction? Something that will look stupid in retrospect ten years from now but that people are currently buying?
By the end, it just got weird: it seemed like he'd go along, think "now who haven't I bashed in a while" and just veered in that direction. He put the Intelligent Design folks in the same chapter with the deconstructionists because... well, if you start to believe that all truth is relative, then why is Evolution any better than ID? Ummm, that seems like a bit of a stretch.
All that said, it is mostly entertaining as it goes along. It's sort of like going to a Jesse Jackson speech---you get all caught up in it as it's going on, and agree in the moment. But when it's over, you wonder if he actually said anything you can hang your hat on.
OK, this is really weird. I had this written down on my list of books to read, under "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World." That seems to be the name of the book in Britain.
Somehow, after I read it in 2008, I did not delete it from my list. And so I came around to read it again in January, 2014. With no recollection of my earlier reading. I liked it much less the second time through (as evidenced in my review below).
Idiot Proof is the American name of this book (which is why it took me so long to find it). I wanted to like it. Somehow I had it listed as "science-y." I thought it would be something like Sagan's "A Demon Hauted World." It was a long lament (rant, really) about modern day folk being anti-"thinking". (For Sagan, that's anti-science, for Wheen it's anti-enlightenment.)
One problem I had with the actual book is that he chose the lowest-hanging fruit: deconstuctionists, self-help books, Fukuyama ("The End of History"), Chomsky, and so on. They're just too easy to satirize. He didn't really offer any solutions, just ranting.
He did a long rant about Enron and how everybody loved them. Until. Well, yeah, it does look bad in retrospect. Perhaps, though, he could offer a prediction? Something that will look stupid in retrospect ten years from now but that people are currently buying?
By the end, it just got weird: it seemed like he'd go along, think "now who haven't I bashed in a while" and just veered in that direction. He put the Intelligent Design folks in the same chapter with the deconstructionists because... well, if you start to believe that all truth is relative, then why is Evolution any better than ID? Ummm, that seems like a bit of a stretch.
All that said, it is mostly entertaining as it goes along. It's sort of like going to a Jesse Jackson speech---you get all caught up in it as it's going on, and agree in the moment. But when it's over, you wonder if he actually said anything you can hang your hat on.
March 7, 2008
Paeans to rationality are fine and good, but this seemed more like a paean to "How Very, Very Much I Read In the Past Three Decades." It does not make a strong, coherent book, just a few scattered strong points. It feels like a bunch of overlong newspaper columns threaded together.
Wheen really goes off the rails in the last chapter, jumping on the bandwagon demonizing the anti-war movement. A signer of the execrable Euston Manifesto, where leftish lights all got quivery in the knees after 9/11 and 7/7, saying "We can be Islamophobes too!" Wrapped in noble words about freedom, the manifesto appears to regard the ever amorphous, undefinable beast called Anti-Americanism as one of the worst specters haunting the world. Anti-Semitism (here a clear code word, meaning that when Israel commits apartheid and ethnic cleansing, it's not polite to call them on it) also makes a big appearance. But forcibly disappearing and torturing Muslim cab drivers for the crime of having a funny beard and getting turned in for a cash reward by their scheming neighbors seems to merit not a jot of Euston concern. Go get stinking drunk with Christopher Hitchens and bitch about how George Bush ruined your beautiful little war you foul animals.
Wheen really goes off the rails in the last chapter, jumping on the bandwagon demonizing the anti-war movement. A signer of the execrable Euston Manifesto, where leftish lights all got quivery in the knees after 9/11 and 7/7, saying "We can be Islamophobes too!" Wrapped in noble words about freedom, the manifesto appears to regard the ever amorphous, undefinable beast called Anti-Americanism as one of the worst specters haunting the world. Anti-Semitism (here a clear code word, meaning that when Israel commits apartheid and ethnic cleansing, it's not polite to call them on it) also makes a big appearance. But forcibly disappearing and torturing Muslim cab drivers for the crime of having a funny beard and getting turned in for a cash reward by their scheming neighbors seems to merit not a jot of Euston concern. Go get stinking drunk with Christopher Hitchens and bitch about how George Bush ruined your beautiful little war you foul animals.
April 12, 2015
I felt it to be a pretty good book. This is the first book I have read by Francis Wheen. He writes clearly and continues to hold the attention. Although I was more or less familiar with the topics covered, it still was filled with lots of interesting particulars and explanations. While he did not focus on religious belief per se, Wheen brought those beliefs in to the story when it was pertinent to those other beliefs he was writing about. The most focused chapter on god was the end timers one. His political views are a definite lean toward the left, but does not let them over influence his presentation. Also his magnifying glass focuses in on the left's irrational beliefs as well as the right's. I enjoyed the book a good deal. A good read for anyone interested in the irrational beliefs that are shaping and influening society.
July 7, 2010
Mostly a catalog of ideological blindness on both the Right and the Left. Wheen makes an effort to tie everything back to rational Enlightenment ideals, but mostly the book reads as a long list of why the Right is stupid for believing in trickle-down economics and the power of the market, while the Left is dangerous for reducing life to relativism and for blind hatred of America.
I have to admit, I enjoy anyone skewering fanatics, and while I always enjoy taking the piss out of conservatives, I also particularly enjoyed reading about Chomsky's denial of Pol Pot's genocide and how relativism led to the shameful American urge to believe in astrology, homeopathy, and creationism.
I don't think I learned a ton of new stuff here, but I did learn a bit, and I was entertained.
I have to admit, I enjoy anyone skewering fanatics, and while I always enjoy taking the piss out of conservatives, I also particularly enjoyed reading about Chomsky's denial of Pol Pot's genocide and how relativism led to the shameful American urge to believe in astrology, homeopathy, and creationism.
I don't think I learned a ton of new stuff here, but I did learn a bit, and I was entertained.
April 1, 2015
The title of this book overseas is How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, which I think is a better name. Anyhow, I was on the verge of giving this book 4 stars, because I think sacred cows should be tipped every now and then, and I took visceral pleasure in at least some of his rants. On the other hand, for a relatively short book, it covers a lot of ground with widely disparate targets, and I don't think it all comes together that well, a notion which is reinforced by the lame attempt of the closing sentences to tie it all together. He also relies a bit much on insult/ad hominem (not surprisingly, given the title), which is surely off-putting to many, and he offers little in the way of constructive alternatives. Still, there's plenty here to chew on and discuss at book clubs and whatnot.
January 14, 2017
Reading this book was like a flashback to all of the political science & history readings throughout my university career; this book was published in 2004, so all that I studied is here, in one giant mass. It really wants to be a grand synthesis of socio-political-historical reactionism over the previous thirty years, but it isn't successful. It reads more like a long catalog of reactionary views, and only rarely offers some analysis or attempts to put these views into some context. It seems hell bent on including as much as possible, resulting in a book that I forced myself to finish, without much enthusiasm, and with eyes glazing over at times. There are useful passages in this book, but it's akin to looking through a pile of coal to find all the diamonds.
April 12, 2009
Terrible. Yes, the book had chapters. Each chapter was labeled. But I'm not so sure the author kept to the chapter topic. Maybe it is because the chapter, like the book itself, had no point. There is not really any direction anywhere in here. Mostly it is filled with what the author considers to be dumb things that dumb people have said or done. But the writing? Really? This was published?
Read
July 23, 2019Drily amusing overview of current social trends the writer disapproves of. Wheen sometimes indulges in a moronic notion of his own (as when he cites with approval Richard Dawkins' suggestion that one should be able to sue astrology columnists for providing inaccurate advice), but on the whole this is both fun and insightful.
September 14, 2008
American edition of How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. Frequently hilarious attack on business con-men, new agers, Princess Diana and her cult, politicians, religious cretins, vapid academics, and other anti-Enlightenment dopes.
March 16, 2007
Elitism for common folks.
June 3, 2008
trying too hard to be clever
almost interesting reading, but wasn't. didn't finish. labourous reading but very interesting topics.
almost interesting reading, but wasn't. didn't finish. labourous reading but very interesting topics.
November 21, 2014
This is the 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World' book for the American Market; don't buy both. If I remember correctly this has one chapter fewer than the UK version.
May 15, 2016
Kind of a rambling book, but he does make some good points. There's just no coherent thesis, though. Fairly easy read, but overall not worth the time.
July 27, 2016
Escellent book!
May 25, 2012
A lot of one sided ranting on fads such as gurus quacks astrology Religious nuts etc
January 13, 2013
Sick of cultural newage? Well he is too, & describes the lunacy brilliantly!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews