Bøger af Francis Wheen

A savagely witty account of the last quarter century, when despite a great leap forward in technology there has been a huge, regressive collapse in our ability to think straight--so that everything has begun to stop making sense

An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century. An intellectual call to arms, Francis Wheen's Sunday Times bestseller is one of 2004's most talked about books.In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In Britain, an era of weary consensualist politics was displaced by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, whose ambition was to reassert 'Victorian values'. In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1,300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the twentieth century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History.What colonised the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of mumbo-jumbo. Modernity was challenged by a gruesome alliance of pre-modernists and post-modernists, medieval theocrats and New Age mystics. It was as if the Enlightenment had never happened.Francis Wheen, winner of the George Orwell prize, evokes the key personalities of the post-political era - including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama Bin-Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer - while charting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century. From UFO scares to dotcom mania, his hilarious and gloriously impassioned polemic describes a period in the world's history when everything began to stop making sense.

A major biography of the man who, more than any other, made the twentieth century. Written by an author of great repute.The history of the 20th century is Marx's legacy. Not since Jesus Christ has an obscure pauper inspired such global devotion - or been so calamitously misinterpreted. The end of the century is a good moment to strip away the mythology and try to rediscover Marx the man. There have been many thousands of books on Marxism, but almost all are written by academics and zealots for whom it is a near blaspemy to treat him as a figure of flesh and blood.In the past few years there have been excellent and successful biographies of many eminent Victorians and yet the most influential of them has remained untouched. In this book Francis Wheen, for the first time, presens Marx the man in all his brilliance and frailty - as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English gentleman; as an angry agitator who spent much of his adult life in scholarly silence in the British Museum Reading Room; as a gregarious and convivial host who fell out with almost all his friends; as a devoted family man who impregnated his housemaid; as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink, cigars and jokes.

"A brilliant book, by a superb author, about a necessary man."-Christopher Hitchens

Karl Marx er en af den moderne tids vigtigste og mest indflydelsesrige tænkere. Uanset politisk overbevisning kan ingen frakende ham en kolossal betydning for vores forståelse af økonomi, politik og filosofi. Men hvem var personen Karl Marx? Den britiske journalist Francis Wheen har skrevet en forfriskende biografi om Marx' liv, tid og tænkning, der går bag om den tunge mytologi og løfter sløret for en bevæget tilværelse, hvor sygdom, økonomisk fallit og store personlige tragedier var hverdagskost. I et umiddelbart og humoristisk sprog skildres Karl Marx' mange ansigter. Den preussiske immigrant, der ægtede en tysk baronesse og blev bedsteborgerlig familiefar. Den iltre filosof, der engang efter en lystig aften på Londons pubber blev set i skarpt trav på flugt fra ordensmagten. Og ikke mindst lederen af den spirende socialistiske bevægelse, der i tæt parløb med sin ven og velgører Friedrich Engels færdedes mellem skarer af farverige revolutionære Pressen skrev:"Ikke alene er det værket til tiden. Det er også værket med i dag lige det rigtige indhold i lige den rigtige form. Hverken en forsvarende helgenlegende eller en inkvisitorisk kætterforbandelse eller en overfladisk dokumentar-'roman' eller en dybtgående, endsige fyldestgørende filosofisk-politisk-økonomisk social-antropologisk analyse. Men en velfunderet, kritisk-medrivende appetitvækker til den afklaring, som nu må indledes af de sidste halvandet hundrede års hidtidige forsøg på at skabe en anden verdensorden end kapitalismens, den sociale uligheds og naturødelæggelses orden." - Ejvind Larsen, Information"Underholdende - og hvidvaskende- biografi over en af de tænkere, der fik størst betydning for verdenshistorien, Karl Marx." - Bent Jensen, Jyllands-Posten"Det er en vidunderlig bog, som kombinerer mange års begærlige studier med den kvikke pen og det polemiske vid, det som Francis Wheen jævnligt også øser ud over the Guardians læsere. Hans mål, som han når med succes, er at redde Marx fra den endeløse række af folk som hader og bagvasker ham. Han gør op med myterne, én efter én." - The Guardian"Han tilbragte alle disse mange år på bibliotekernes læsesal, men hans teorier var og er ikke rigtige." - Noa Redington, Weekendavisen"Som kapitalismeforsker var manden, der gjorde klassekampen til begreb, genial. Det vil de næste mange års globaliseringsmodstand dokumentere. Det er tid til et comeback for manden, der fik bylder af bourgeoisiet og han får det, hvad enten vi vil det eller ej." - Jes Stein Pedersen, Politiken"Francis Wheens stort anlagte biografi om Karl Marx viser, at Marx viser, at Marx stadig er for kontroversiel til at kunne vurderes nøgternt og uvildigt." - Asger Brandt, Kristeligt Dagblad