A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site


buy us books !
Amazon wishlist

the complete review - non-fiction

How Mumbo-Jumbo
Conquered the World
(Idiot Proof)

by
Francis Wheen

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B : entertaining, if not particularly helpful

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Entertaining, at least

  From the Reviews:

• "There is a great deal of nonsense talked in the world, and this panoramic book is an entertaining guide. It is best read as a series of individual essays, of sharply varying interest. Some of them are excellent, some overstated and some more nonsensical than their targets. Which chapters fall into which category will depend on the reader's political, religious and cultural outlook." - The Economist
  
  
• "Sometimes you think he must be making it up; but he's not. (...) Some of the evidence Wheen quotes here goes way beyond parody (.....) But if Wheen's book succeeds in starting to shift the balance between reason and sentimentality, between the lavish prompts of the heart and the colder ones of the brain, between rigorous analysis and twaddle cloaked in obscurity, then I think the ghost of Jefferson will have every right, and reason, to be proud of him." - David McKie, The Guardian
  
  
• "The tide of ignorance may be irreversible, but at least we can go down fighting." - Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
  
  
• "In the end, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World is a book of nostalgia. Baffled and unnerved by a world in which his judgements lack authority and his hopes are mocked, Wheen has produced a plangent lament for the days when bien-pensant thinkers were figures of some importance, cultural authorities to whom the rest of society deferred. One suspects that few of his readers will share his angst. Still, even at his silliest he is never dull." - John Gray, The Independent
  
  
• "Francis Wheen's book has the index of the year." - Martin Ince, New Scientist
  
  
• "The reason Wheen never tries to understand why people believe the daft stuff that they do is because of his innate faith in argument and reason. If he knows something is nonsense, why doesn't everyone else ? (...) Nothing makes sense any more and it bloody well should. Wheen's indignation is righteous and well worth reading. It will greatly appeal to those who are as reasonable as him. I'm not, and that's probably because I am a different star sign." - Suzanne Moore, New Statesman
  
  
• "It’s hard to quarrel with the foolishness of some of Wheen’s targets. But his larger thesis -- that Ayatollah Khomeini and Margaret Thatcher spearheaded a retreat from the values of the Enlightenment back toward those of the Middle Ages -- is so thinly reasoned as to seem to warrant its own entry in Wheen’s encyclopedia absurdica." - The New Yorker
  
  
• "Wheen has a Swiftian relish for exposing the cant that attends the 'new irrationality', particularly when it is allied with corporate or political greed. His enormous range of arcane gossip and obscure biographical fact, product of many years fossicking at Private Eye, informs much of this contemporary history" - Tim Adams, The Observer
  
  
• "Wheen is doing his valiant (and hilarious) best for the rational." - Tom Templeton, The Observer
  
  
• "His examples are powerful, and rather frightening. (...) This amusing, intelligent and elegantly argued book is as good a demonstration of the values it defends as could be imagined." - Philip Hensher, The Spectator
  
  
• "Francis Wheen takes a hugely enjoyable sweep through the tangled thickets of superstition and gullibility in which modern man likes to ramble. He takes particular delight in reminding us how easily fools are parted from their money and how many of them there are." - Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Times
  
  
• "Wheen presents his argument as a series of chapters on religion, economics and so on, but in practice the book is a brilliant, extended satiric essay." - Will Cohu, The Telegraph
  
  
• "In an earlier day this book might have been burned by the public hangman. It is great fun to read and is likely to defeat any early-to-bed resolution." - E. S. Turner, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Idiot Proof, while certainly given to extended bouts of polemic glee, is actually a pretty sober work of criticism masquerading as a rant -- which, when you think of it, is itself a sobering criticism of what it takes for reasoned debate to get noticed in our new millennial literary marketplace." - Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (re-titled for the American market as Idiot Proof) is, as the British sub-title has it: A short history of modern delusions. The annus horribilis for Wheen is 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini's establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran and the beginning of the Thatcher era in Great Britain the jolt that should have woken up people to the fact that the ideals of Enlightenment definitively no longer had much of a hold or influence. Add the election of the always chipper gipper, Ronald Reagan, as president of the most powerful nation in the world a year later and it was pretty much all over.
       Wheen focusses on the past quarter century, though he does acknowledge occasionally that common sense has previously suffered devastating blows as well. But the contemporary and proximate obviously resonates more clearly -- and is concern for considerably worry.
       Wheen's book is a maddening quick dash through much of the idiocy so popular in the world now. From astrology- and new-age-consulting world leaders to deconstructionists, from doom-sayers (grandly (and repeatedly) announcing the apocalypse which still hasn't come) to New Economy defenders (who believe the rules -- and basic market fundamentals -- are somehow different now) Wheen shows that common sense is often in short supply -- and often especially so when important things are at issue.
       It's a fun tour. Wheen cuts through all the bullshit, and cites a dizzying amount of gloriously misguided nonsense: it would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. From the leaders to the followers, the Left to the Right, from academia to the finance sector he skewers easy targets everywhere.
       Astonishing gullibility, an unfounded faith in superstition, and, above all, continued belief in the super-natural (including, but not limited to, belief in deities), as well as politicians' craven pandering to loud and influential yet ignorant segments of the population (such as those who want children to be taught Creationsism) have far-reaching (and negative) consequences touching almost all aspects of modern life. Common sense seems to hold little sway any longer. (Okay, that's only how it seems in the face of all of these examples, but the prevalence of delusion and irrationality is still quite stunning.)
       Occasionally, Wheen goes overboard. He makes proper fun of someone named Deepak Chopra who, among much else, apparently believes: "Aging is simply learned behavior", and suggests a life-span of 130 years shouldn't be that much of a problem. But Wheen goes on to claim:

Why the longevity formula failed to work for Princess Diana, with whom he lunched shortly before her death, remains a mystery.

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• Public Affairs publicity page
• Article at spiked
• Interview at the Boston Globe

• Committee for a Workers' International
• Gay and Lesbian Humanist
• The Guardian (1)
• The Guardian (2)
• The Independent
• Maclean's
• New Statesman
• New York Press
• The New Yorker
• New Zealand Listener
• The Observer (1)
• The Observer (2)
• PopMatters
• Sunday Herald
• Sunday Times
• The Telegraph
• Toronto Star
• The Washington Post
• The Whig Society

• Francis Wheen at PFD

• Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont (UK title: Intellectual Impostures). The notorious article, and a lengthy explication of what Sokal was trying to prove.
• Alan Sokal looks Beyond the Hoax

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       British author Francis Wheen is deputy editor of Private Eye.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2004-2008 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links