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How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World

3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 · rating details · 640 ratings · 58 reviews

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 idealists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher transformed politics with a combination of breezy charm and assertive "Victorian values." In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah...more

Paperback, 338 pages

Published 2004 by Harper Perennial

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Apr 11, 2013 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-will-teach-us-nothing

I was looking for a review to revive to mark the passing of Baroness Margaret Thatcher of Finsbury Circus and I couldn't find one, so this will have to do. I note that the BBC are in earnest discussions whether to allow a song to be played which has just shot into the top ten here - they think it might be some kind of tasteless comment or something, can't see why. It's the old one from Wizard of Oz called "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

A review

Chapter 1 : this pours contempt upon Thatcherism and...more

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May 26, 2011 Tweeting rated it 4 of 5 stars

Deepak Chopra plus Mrs Thatcher. Wheen nails this unlikely duo.

1 like · like · see review

Jan 31, 2012 Steve rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: political-philosophy, nonfiction, organizations, financial-crises, social-criticism, political-history

Unfortunately, I cannot assign this book 2.5 stars because it lies just below "like" in my opinion, but a bit better than "ok"

First, what I liked about this book. I do very much like how he demolishes loony ideas of both the Left and the Right, and in fact he casts scorn rather more on the former than the latter. I relished his blast against Noam Chomsky, a person for whom I feel an ever increasing lack of intellectual respect. (It is difficult to discover Wheen's own political position, althoug...more Unfortunately, I cannot assign this book 2.5 stars because it lies just below "like" in my opinion, but a bit better than "ok"

First, what I liked about this book. I do very much like how he demolishes loony ideas of both the Left and the Right, and in fact he casts scorn rather more on the former than the latter. I relished his blast against Noam Chomsky, a person for whom I feel an ever increasing lack of intellectual respect. (It is difficult to discover Wheen's own political position, although it seems to be somewhat left, but not conventionally so.) I also admire his proclaimed devotion to the ideals of the Enlightenment. His critiques are trenchant, and his writing style is both urbane and accessible. I think Wheen serves as an example that there are divergent voices out there that don't buy into the shibboleths of the Left or the Right.

However, what I did not like about this book was his borderline fanaticism which led to a lack of critical self-reflection. I have an issue of the SKEPTIC magazine that was published as a tribute to the life of Stephen Jay Gould. I have kept it because in reading it, I had a profound sense that its authors were nearly as fanatically against UFOs and other questionable ideas as the supporters of these ideas themselves. Much the same holds for Wheen. I too admire the Enlightenment, and like Wheen, I regard pomo (post modern) "philosophers" as charlatans. However, as a sociologist, I am devoted to *understanding* social phenomena even if I personally think they are bizarre and/or stupid.

This book is only an angry jeremiad that seeks to tear down received opinion. As such, it can only persuade those who are already critical. It does not seek to understand why people hold these ideas, it simply deplores that they hold them at all. I find this unsatisfactory because one cannot figure out why something is the case until one "gets inside the problem" and figures out what makes it work. When Kant said that Enlightenment is about "man" escaping his own self-imposed immaturity (paraphrase), he was talking, I feel, about creating critical understanding. That is, to seek to really understand what makes people and things "tick".

Wheen, by contrast, is holding not to this interpretation of the Enlightenment but a rather more chauvinistic one that disparages religion and indeed anything that is not purely a product of rationality. However, as Garry Wills has argued, "The learned have their own superstitions, prominent among them a belief that superstition is evaporating." (Wills, Garry. 1990. Under God: Religion and American Politics. Simon and Schuster) Wheen strikes me as profoundly conservative in this respect, wanting to bring back the 1950's and 1960's intellectual viewpoint of an ever secularizing society.

What this means is that Wheen does not attempt to penetrate the phenomenology of the various "superstitions" he criticizes. Instead he seeks to make anyone who holds these ideas seem ridiculous. While I agree that many people are "blithering idiots", I am not satisfied that this constitutes a sufficient explanation for the continuation of strange ideas in society. While I am devoted to scientific realism (the view that there is a real world out there that we can understand through science), I am also persuaded that human knowledge cannot escape processes of social construction, not even for the most scientific positive researcher. We develop knowledge socially and that often means adherence to particular ideas even when the facts seem contradictory. We can overcome bad ideas through critical analysis, but we can never escape the social component of knowledge entirely.

Hence, for me, the interesting question is why, for example, various New Age beliefs exist. Rather than see these as some sort of "betrayal" of science, I would seek to ground these ideas in particular social processes. I suspect that the answer to the question I have just posed might indict chauvinistic views of the Enlightenment as a partial cause of the move towards pseudoscience. But at the very least, I try to have a somewhat sympathetic understanding the views that people have. Whereas Wheen disdains the supernatural, I prefer to invoke the sociologist of religion Peter Berger, who pointed out that the existence of dreams are a key component of the supernatural. My point is not to say that dreams are supernatural - I am rather more convinced that they have a conventionally scientific explanation - but that for all of us, the nature of existence is rather precarious and science does not have historically deep roots. Until one develops real sympathy for why people might feel that "superstition" has the answer, one can never really understand the existence of religion, belief in crystals, UFOs, and the like. And that to me is the *real* point of science and Enlightenment - understanding.

Post Script: Upon some reflection, I am apt to think that Wheen shares many aspects with his friend, the late Christopher Hitchens, who likewise was highly adamant, difficult to pin down politically, and who was remarkably unsympathetic to the notion of religion. I suspect that Wheen is somewhat more moderate, however, there is a certain resemblance.
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Jan 11, 2011 Parksy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Very intersting take on some of the political changes over the last 20 yrs. Main point is a death of rationalism at the knife of cultural relativism and post modernism. Very cool read.

______________________

From Publishers Weekly
British columnist and satirist Wheen presents an exhaustive but ultimately exhausting full-frontal assault on the past 25 years of "Counter-Enlightenment idiocy." His fencing dummies include Margaret Thatcher, Reaganomics, the Iranian Revolution, the Christian Coalition,...more Very intersting take on some of the political changes over the last 20 yrs. Main point is a death of rationalism at the knife of cultural relativism and post modernism. Very cool read.

______________________

From Publishers Weekly
British columnist and satirist Wheen presents an exhaustive but ultimately exhausting full-frontal assault on the past 25 years of "Counter-Enlightenment idiocy." His fencing dummies include Margaret Thatcher, Reaganomics, the Iranian Revolution, the Christian Coalition, Deepak Chopra, post-modernism, Francis Fukuyama, creationism, conspiracy theorists, people who believe in UFOs, astrology, the military-industrial complex, Cherie Blair and Hillary Clinton's fondness for New Age philosophy, Noam Chomsky, Enron, suicide bombers and much, much more. Wheen skewers his targets with the kind of rapier-like wit the world has come to expect and enjoy from British masters of the vituperative arts. But there's an awful lot of bloodletting here, and much of it is directed at bestselling authors, whose sales numbers Wheen bitterly notes as a way to quantitatively measure the reading public's stupidity. Worse, he burdens his book, which is best read as a series of essays, with a to-hell-in-a-handbasket hypothesis that the level of attack on Enlightenment rationality has increased dramatically in recent years, going so far as to assign a date to the inflection point: 1979, when Thatcher and the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. Some readers may bristle at Wheen's idea that right-wing economic policy is inextricably tied to anti-rational, religious fundamentalism, and the author's increasingly stretched attempts to prove this relationship begin to slip into the same realm of conspiracy theorizing he mocks in others. As an exercise in knocking down sacred cows left, right and center, this book proves that at the end of the satirical road lies nihilism.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker
Looking back on the last quarter-century, Wheen, a British journalist, sees a disturbing recrudescence of irrationalists, including "holy warriors, antiscientific relativists, economic fundamentalists, radical postmodernists, New Age mystics." American politicians routinely resort to "intense sentimentality" to sway voters; C.E.O.s lure investors with talk of "faith" in place of assets; Christian evangelists opine that September 11th is "probably what we deserve" for allowing feminists and the A.C.L.U. to flourish. In perhaps the silliest example, a consultant advises British civil servants to wear different colored hats for different tasks: red for developing hunches, yellow for cheering, black for questioning. 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(less)

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Dec 28, 2010 Simeonberesford added it

Shelves: nonfiction

This is occasionally amusing if you like watching the shooting of fish in barrels. Wheen seems to fancy himself as a modern H. L. Mencken. In an age when people generally let twaddle pass unremarked, shrugging shoulders, and assuming that the foolish are always with us, he strikes at the obvious targets boldly. Here is someone who presumes it is possible to gain some sort of advantage over the forces of idiocy.[return][return]Wheen does convince me that the fog of moral relativism has spread far...more This is occasionally amusing if you like watching the shooting of fish in barrels. Wheen seems to fancy himself as a modern H. L. Mencken. In an age when people generally let twaddle pass unremarked, shrugging shoulders, and assuming that the foolish are always with us, he strikes at the obvious targets boldly. Here is someone who presumes it is possible to gain some sort of advantage over the forces of idiocy.[return][return]Wheen does convince me that the fog of moral relativism has spread far. All forms of objectivism seem to be under assault. Social moral and scientific values are all at times lost in the myths of relativism. One theory always assumed as good as another.[return]Science and technology of course continues unbothered by the lack of critical thought or real peer review in other areas.[return]But unless critical thought is widespread society is doomed to misuse that science.[return][return][return]However the book has no real depth just a selective list of examples of varying degrees of dubiousness, with no description of a theme, no analysis of context nor sociological impact beyond the immediate cause-effect.[return]Wheen starts with the proposition that Mumbo-Jumbo took power along with Khomeini and Thatcher. and has remainded ascendent ever since.[return]He lists examples and that is that. No grand plan, No analysis of trends no real evidence of its growth no distinguishing between follies. mere anecdotes. Just a list of things that he felt personally affronted or amused by. I see one of his newspaper reviewers summed the work up as equivilant to watching Victor Meldrew mutter I dont believe it. He was wrong. Meldrew is more amusing.[return][return]Mumbo Jumbo did not in my opinion suddenly gain ascendency. to remain in power ever since. Pivotal though that time may be in many ways. People have been battling it since time immemorial. H. L. Mencken, George Orwell, and Alan Sokal. are amongst the fighters. Indeed Sokal's success in spreading dismay amongst the enemy is documented here, evidence that Mumbo jumbo does lose on occassion that it has not conquered the world.[return][return]There is no overall analysis. we are left to assume that Margret Thatcher's confrontational nature her inability to seek or negotiate compromise. is some how equivilent to the indescisive ambivilence of those politicans who's natural instinct on seeing a fence is to sit on it ignoring as often as not the warning signs,Danger Wolves!(less)

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Jan 14, 2010 Palmyrah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although he duly skewers UFO abduction tales, postmodernist irrationalism, New Age quackery and dotcom madness, Wheen's primary target is the mumbo-jumbo of the both the Right and Left (or rather what passes for the Left) in contemporary politics. It is not always clear, however, that what he identifies as mumbo-jumbo isn't, from time to time, a political prescription that works. But at least he's fair-minded; both sides get an equal dose of the rod.

Wheen's basic thesis is that modern western ci...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Louise Armstrong rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's not so much what he said, I'm in agreement that fuzzy thinking is a creeping menace - but the way that he says it. He is always negative in outlook and slanted to the snide and put down. E.g. Gerald Ratner is used as 'proof' that businesmen are villains, describing him as 'all mouth and no trousers' Wheen goes on to say 'Ratner managed to transform his firm's annual profit of £112 million into a loss of £122 million and was forced to quit.'

That's it - now to me, he leaves out the hard work...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Maciej Chojnacki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dobra książka A momentami, szczególnie pod koniec, nawet bardzo dobra. Miałem chwilę zwątpienia, ale to właśnie końcówka przynosi zwyżkę formy. O czym to jest? O obronie Oświecenia, w największym skrócie. O New Age, UFO, teoriach spiskowych, ale również o współczesnej ekonomii i polityce. Wheen nie szczędzi razów nikomu: obrywa się i lewicy i prawicy. Czuć wprawdzie lekką "anglocentryczność", ale nie na tyle żeby zrezygnować z lektury. Czytając "Jak brednie podbiły świat" miałem wrażenie, że ską...more

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Mar 17, 2012 M.G. Harris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Did we just imagine the Enlightenment? Because according to Francis Wheen, its enduring power to persuade might be on the wane. This is a riveting account about the 'rise' of emotion-led thinking versus rationality, as evidenced by phenomena such as the fascination with alternative medicine, happy-clappy business gurus, the enthusiasm with collective grief at the death of Princess Diana. The darker side to this is the rise of religious fundamentalism. Written in 2004 whilst the world was still r...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Mark Love rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read this book in about 2005, soon after it came out. In the post-9/11 world during the dying days of Blairism and it was a refreshing broadside against the bland meaningless language that politicians and commentators effortlessly spewed to justify their actions and inactions. Reading it again now in the wake of the financial crisis, and in an age of Tory austerity it has depressingly familiar feel.

Wheen's thesis is that we are slipping back from an age of rational enlightenment into a p...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Nathan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandoned, history

This allegedly humorous "short history of modern delusions" is, as many other reviewers have said, a tedious rant. Yes, Presidents hired witchdoctors. Yes, Thatcher professed a return to Victorian values as though they were good things. The ponderous weight of the author's determined detailing of the intellectual crimes of the vacuous and venal overwhelmed any interest I might have had in the topic. I think ultimately my problem lies with the title: we learn the steps by which mumbo-jumbo took o...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

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Sep 29, 2010 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

The "wacky" cover design and "Hilarious!" quote from Jeremy Paxman had me expecting a Grumpy Old Man-style rant, but it's better than that. Wheen takes on all those who, in his view, have betrayed the principles of the Enlightenment, from New Age quacks to postmodernist critical theorists to free market evangelists. It is funny, but also erudite, passionate and informative. Some of the economics stuff went over my head, and some of the targets are all too easy (astrologers and homeopathists), bu...more

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May 24, 2013 Eddie rated it 5 of 5 stars

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World links some major movements in politics, belief and commerce/economics from 1979 to the present day that defy the reason and rationality that was established by the Enlightenment several hundred years ago.

The Enlightenment was an attitude rather than an ideology. Its foundations come from the likes of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Newton, Thomas Jefferson and David Hume. There was of course different strands in thought and different options between say the contin...more How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World links some major movements in politics, belief and commerce/economics from 1979 to the present day that defy the reason and rationality that was established by the Enlightenment several hundred years ago.

The Enlightenment was an attitude rather than an ideology. Its foundations come from the likes of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Newton, Thomas Jefferson and David Hume. There was of course different strands in thought and different options between say the continental philosophers and say the empiricist approach but there was also figures like Kant that tried to reconcile the two approaches. However certain principles were common and accepted by all, such as intellectual freedom and a commitment to free inquiry (i.e. not influenced by authority such as the Church or monarchs). Recently it is these common principles that have been under threat in today's world.

Firstly there was Post-modernist thought that infected universities in the USA and UK. Students in literature, film and cultural studies were taught that the world is just a social construct about which one can say anything provided it is said obscurely enough.

Then there was the huge growth in alternative medicine. Despite there being no evidence that it has any medicinal benefits at all Homoeopathy and other alternative health treatments are a massive industry. Wheen quotes a 1998 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that the use of Homoeopathic preparations almost doubled between 1990 and 1997 in America. In Britain by the end of the 20th century Britain’s 36,000 GPs were outnumbered by 50,000 alternative health practitioners. Americans spend around £26 billion a year on alternative healthcare.

Turning to economic theories, non nonsensical in different ways, America and UK have been guided by monetarist economic policies since the 80s. The idea was that prosperity trickles from the “top down” as opposed to the “middle out”. However since the 70s employment income for all but the richest 10% of households grew in America. Now middle-income families are facing falling real wages and higher debt to keep up with rising household bills. Much the same things have happened in Britain although we at the moment, at least, still enjoy free healthcare and greater employment rights than in America. Although some of these things are changing in the UK.

There were other economic affects: between 1895-1980 the USA showed a trade surplus but in 87 the US trade deficit was 340 billion dollars. On Black Monday the Dow Jones lost 22.6% of its total value almost twice the 1929 plunge which precipitated the Great Depression. Later there was the dot-com boom, then the credit crunch and the situation we're in now.

Part of of the economic narrative in the 80s came from a proliferation of management books, then books on personal growth and mysticism. There was a mantra from the 80's that unless Britain learned to love wealth creators it was doomed to become an economic backwater. Figures like Jonathan Aiken (Conservative MP), Gerald Ronson (British Businessman and establishment figure). However some of these people were not all that they seem, Aiken was later jailed for perjury and Ronson was jailed for an illegal shares operation.

Companies such as Enron were also lauded for their achievements. It was created from the merger of two medium sized national pipeline companies. Sales rose from around $4 billion in 89 to $40 billion ten years later. The company though went bankrupt at which point we started see the true picture. Losses were transferred to off-shore companies off-balance sheet and investment capital was shown as profit. These tactics kept the share price high attracting more funds and enriching its directors.

Then there are monetarist policies that have been implemented on other part of the world through the America dominated IMF. In 1997 “Asian Tiger Economies” like Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines initially implementing the IMF rules of deregulation and privatisation found themselves trashed by foreign investors. Interest reached around 80% in Indonesia. People's lives can be changed at the whims of a group of investors and one should always remember that 1.3 billion people live on less than a dollar a day.

There is so much in this book but it is well worth the read as there is a lot of knowledge and considered option in it. You can also return to read it in chunks. Overall it is also presented humorously despite making some serious points. I hope my brief summary does it some justice.(less)

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Aug 07, 2011 Ron rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wheen is once again delightfully funny as he takes on the lunatic fringe that has taken over the world of politics, ably dissecting the fallacious logic of both the right and the left, but he undercuts his normal clarity with a muddled and confused summation that actually seems to defend American imperialism with the same rationalizations the right has always used of bringing freedom and liberal democracy to the rest of the world (going so far as to quote the execrable Hitchens in the concluding...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Chinook rated it 3 of 5 stars

Another book that I picked up with an expectation that wasn’t realized was “How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World” by Francis Wheen. I thought it was going to be about language, instead it was about the rise in non-rational thinking in the past twenty years or so. While it wasn’t what I expected, I found it interesting. He discusses the emotional populism of recent politicians, like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and mentions one of my favourite quotes: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Hettie rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was very disappointing. From the comments of others and the blurb it sounded very interesting. It really was not. This subject is still I would be interested in reading but the writing in the book is just not very readible.

The prolgue is strange but was interesting. A comparison of political change in tehran and britain. The conclusion that he came to did not seemed to be linked and up to the point I read to the author had not explained how he came to that view.

I did find chapter 2 on...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating read, which made me both angrier & more relieved that others have noticed the intense effort of our media & governments to dumb everything down. An updated edition should be released to take in the latest bubble burst.

As someone in Ireland, the IMF parts were hardest-hitting, having seen our government protect foreign lenders to our banks & bailing out the same failing institutions with tax money, exactly what was mentioned in this book written before it happened!

Stayi...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Owain Lewis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Pretty good but to be honest I can't remember all that much about it, apart from the last chapters about Friedmantite neoliberalism and the hypocrisy and general failiure thereof. Even so I seem to remember thinking that most of what I read seemed to be a reasonable analysis of the various situations and subjects tackled, whatever they were. It's quite research heavy, which considering the focus of the book is only a good thing, but I don't remember ever finding it boring. In fact I do remember...more

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Nov 19, 2008 Len rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mr. Wheen has an interesting perspective on the world and this book is a fun look at how we got to a place where B.S. seems to rule all. I really enjoyed the more cultural chapters, like the one about "gurus" like Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins. Wheen takes them apart for selling such crap and takes down a few politicians as well.

But the book gets all "economic" about halfway through and never goes back to the fun stuff. He spends countless pages talking about globalization and American foreign...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Daniel Lowen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I started this in 2005 and re-started it in 2010, this time getting to the end. Glad I did. After a slow start, it got a lot more interesting. All about the rise of anti-Enlightenment hogwash. Though it's hardly unique to our times -- think medieval indulgences, etc.

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Aug 11, 2011 Ketan Shah added it

The title makes this book sound like a light read,but it's anything but. it is well worth picking up though,especially for it's exposes of the hypocrisy of many leading politicians.

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Jul 30, 2009 Stig rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm always in the market for books debunking crackpottery, and I enjoyed this one. Its main problem is that Wheen attacks a vast range of targets which tends to weaken the focus a bit. He certainly gets around: postmodernists, Muslim fanatics, politicians of various stripes, economists, management gurus, Diana cultists... Then again, there are many kinds of nuts, and in the current climate of value relativism they get way too much acceptance not only from the gullible, but also from those who ou...more

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Jun 04, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: shiraz

Good critical book covering a broad range of topics from the princess di excess to political speak. Easy to pick up and put down at any point and get something out of it.

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Sep 17, 2011 David Williamson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: overrated-do-not-read

Not a particular intelligent book, if anything is complicated it must be mumbo-jumbo. I read it for clear arguments against certain theories of thought, I found none.

1 like · like · see review

Aug 07, 2011 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: comic-work

some aspects clever, some easy targets taken down but then easy targets normally can be. Not as funny or as incisive as I had hoped it was going to be

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Jan 02, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics

A story of how the achievements of the Enlightenment Era have been threatened by religious fundamentalists and other groups seeking "to undermine reason."

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Jul 14, 2012 Maxine Attong rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hilarious!! A perspective on economics that is often not shared. Does not entertain the BS of "isms" and thumbs his nose at them. Brilliant!!

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Dec 09, 2010 Manda Graham rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nope no good disagreed with Wheen's point of view and felt it was very biased for the 1st two chapters that I couldn't continue.

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Aug 05, 2012 Stephen Smith added it

An excellent series of disparate chapters taking modern society apart forensically. Wheen is a very astute and funny man.

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About Francis Wheen

Francis 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...more Francis 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.
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More about Francis Wheen...

Books by Francis Wheen

Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Days of Paranoia

Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense

Hoo Hahs And Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism, 1991 2001

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52202.How_Mumbo_Jumbo_Conquered_The_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170385311l/52202.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52202.How_Mumbo_Jumbo_Conquered_The_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen[/url]

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World

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