Our daily news bulletins bring us tales of the wonder of science, from Mars rovers and intelligent robots to developments in cancer treatment, and yet often the emphasis is on the potential threats posed by science. It appears that irrationality is on the rise in western society, and public opinion is increasingly dominated by unreflecting prejudice and unwillingness to engage with factual evidence. From genetically modified crops and food, organic farming, the MMR vaccine, environmentalism, the precautionary principle and the new anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements, the rejection of the evidence-based approach nurtures a culture of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism, and leads to dogmatic assertion and intolerance. In this compelling and timely examination of science and society, Dick Taverne argues that science, with all the benefits it brings, is an essential part of civilised and democratic society: it offers the most hopeful future for mankind.

A scathing indictment of American modern-day culture examines the current disdain for logic and evidence fostered by the mass media, religious fundamentalism, poor public education, a lack of fair-minded intellectuals, and a lazy, credulous public, condemning our addiction to infotainment, from TV to the Web, and assessing its repercussions for the country as a whole. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

Ever since the shocking revelations of the fascist ties of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism’s infatuation with fascism has been extensive and widespread. He questions postmodernism’s claim to have inherited the mantle of the Left, suggesting instead that it has long been enamored with the opposite end of the political spectrum. Wolin reveals how, during in the 1930s, C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot were seduced by fascism's promise of political regeneration and how this misapprehension affected the intellectual core of their work. The result is a compelling and unsettling reinterpretation of the history of modern thought. In a new preface, Wolin revisits this illiberal intellectual lineage in light of the contemporary resurgence of political authoritarianism.

'Assia was my true wife, and the best friend I ever had', wrote Ted Hughes, after his lover surrendered her life and that of their young daughter in 1969, six years after Sylvia Plath had suffered a similiar fate. Diva, she-devil, enchantress, muse, Lillith, Jezebel - Assia inspired many epithets during her life. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been related from one of two points of view: hers or his. Missing for over four decades had been a third: that of Hughes's mistress. This first biography of Assia Wevill views afresh the Plath-Hughes relationship and at the same time, recounts the journey that shaped her life. Wevill's is a complex story, formed as it is by the pull of often contrary forces.

One of America's leading novelists and poets, "Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him."-The Sunday Times

On an eighteenth-century Earth crippled by alchemical disaster, a secret American cabal led by Benjamin Franklin strives to prevent the annihilation of humankind The dark magic that the great alchemist Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently unleashed with his discovery of philosopher’s mercury has taken a devastating toll on Earth: The destruction of Europe and the advent of eternal winter have aided the mysterious malakim in their apparent quest for the annihilation of the human race. In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin hones his alchemical skills and prepares the Junto—his secret cabal of scientists, Native American tribesmen, former slaves, and fugitive European intellectuals—for the upcoming battle for humankind’s survival as the army of the Scottish “pretender” king James Stuart invades the continent to reestablish British dominion. Meanwhile, on the other side of a shockingly diminished world, in the court of the mysteriously vanished Peter the Great, the missing tsar’s chief alchemist, Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, prepares to depart Russia in search of her lost son, who may well be at the heart of the conspiracy of malevolent angels to eliminate the human scourge. The third volume in author Greg Keyes’s ingenious Age of Unreason alternate history series, Empire of Unreason broadens the story, elevates the action, and reveals secrets within secrets as the surviving inhabitants of this different, endangered world race frantically toward a climactic confrontation.

Today, media commentators, intellectuals and politicians declare that western science and rationality are threatened by irrational enemies. Evangelicals, postmodernists, and Islamists are on the march, they say. The Rome that science built is under siege. But there's a problem with these stirring attempts to defend the truth. They aren't true. In this urgent new book, Dan Hind confronts the great machinery of deception in which we live, and which now threatens to destroy our civilization. In particular, he takes to task a group of prominent intellectuals who have exaggerated the threat posed by the so-called forces of unreason-religion, postmodernism and other "mumbo-jumbo." The commentators, says Hind, distract us from much more pressing threats to an open democratic society based on freedom of speech and inquiry. This book shows that the real threats to reason aren't wacky or foreign or stupid; they reside in our state and corporate bureaucracies - and, one way or another, they probably pay your salary. In recovering the idea of Enlightenment, Hind explores its vital importance and reveals how it can help us to achieve a truly democratic politics, in which we have a genuine say in the decisions that are taken on our behalf.

The aim of this book is the understanding of how psychoanalysis came to be so generally accepted by the public at large. The author, a sociologist, focuses on reconstructing the system of ideas upon which the theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests.

An Instant New York Times Bestseller! China has concentration camps now. Why do Westerners claim our sins are unique? It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia? It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. Dictators who slaughter their own people are happy to jump on the “America is a racist country” bandwagon and mimic the language of antiracism and “pro-justice” movements as PR while making authoritarian conquests. If the West is to survive, it must be defended. The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself.