Promotional Information

This edition is updated with a new foreword and two new chapters of John Gray's writing.

About the Author

John Gray is most recently the acclaimed author of Straw Dogs- Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, Heresies- Against Progress and Other Illusions, Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern and Black Mass- Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. He is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the University of London.

Reviews

Gray's dissection of modern delusion, cant and wishful thinking is to be welcomed in this moment of convulsion ... This is a book to learn from and argue with
*Literary Review*

A thoroughly enjoyable book ... These essays cover a remarkable range of topics, from Isaiah Berlin to Damien Hirst, from torture to environmentalism. But their unifying theme is that our naïve belief in the idea of progress has turned modern life into a constant round of shadow-boxing
*Observer*

A visionary ... one of the most reliably provocative and heterodox voices in British intellectual life today
*New Statesman*

Gray has consistently anticipated the shape of things to come . . . he teaches us that true humanism is to be found in uncertainty and doubt
*Will Self*

Invigorating...elegant, witty, incisive... Gray's assault on Enlightenment ideas of progress is timelier than ever
*The Guardian*