How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen, which is basically a meandering tour through post-modernism, supply-side economics, political Islam and various other flavours of contemporary wackiness. Humorous enough for what it is, but as a polemic- which Wheen seems to think it is- it's really too shallow to be worth very much. He claims to be staking out a defence of those who believe in "history, progress and reason", but never really explains what any of those things are actually supposed to be, and his engagement with most of his topics is pretty limited. Perhaps that's acceptable when talking about healing crystals and UFOs, but when you're talking about something as for want of a better word "serious" as post-structuralism or political Islam, point and scoffing really doesn't cut it. I mean, just for his example, despite his talking at some length about both the Iranian regime and Al Qaeda, you wouldn't come away from the book knowing tat the former are Twelver Shi'ites and the latter Sunni Qutbist, or what the significance of this distinction was, which you'd think would come up at least in passing. It just ends up coming across as a bit snotty, as if Wheen is simply too good to engage with his subjects, too clever and too (a word he is fond of using, but less fond of defining) rational, which, ironically-yet-predictably enough, seems like a pretty irrational way of addressing the topic.
