Francis Wheen, an English columnist and writer, wrote a book published in 2004 under two titles. In England it was "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions". In the US it was: "Idiot Proof". Tim Hall reviewed it once before for Blogcritics in November 2004 - I like his review but I have a few things to say about this book myself.

It's funny and fun to read. Wheen has taken a series of stories from business, economics, politics and popular culture and brought them together in a way that makes connections. His stories are about people who persuade other people to accept dubious truths, and people who let themselves be persuaded to make bad decisions, people who obey or enrich ruthless, greedy and grandiose people, people who are drawn into mass hysteria. Part of the value in the book is the collection of stories, and part of it is the sheer glee he takes in exposing the vanities and the gullibility of the rich and powerful.

Most of Chapter 4, "The Demolition Merchants of Reality", deals with the increasing popularity of post-modernism in academic settings. He discusses Sokal's hoax and various excesses of post-modernism. He explains the intellectual weaknesses of post-modernism and the inversion of post-modernism, which has turned from being a skeptical process to a set of arguments to support pluralism of theories in the sciences. He makes (as did Wendy Kaminer in her book "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials") a reasonable point that post-modernism has become foundational to the claims of creationists to offer "alternative theories" of geology and biology in the public schools of America. However he ends with an anachronistic discussion of the Scopes trial in Tennessee as an example of post-modernist rationalization of religion against the facts.

He has a good chapter on the public response the death of Lady Diana and the contorted efforts of various intellectual feminists to recreate her as a metaphor of repressed femininity in modern society. In that chapter, he has some insights into the absence of great unifying social myths and rituals in modern society and the fascination with celebrities and other seemingly random transient mass events. He has good opening and closing chapters which address the way Thatcher and Reagan promoted their economic policies, by sheer persistence, repetition and power, and how the media were complicit in lulling the public into accepting the logic of dishonest arguments as if they were fundamental economic truths. There is another somber chapter on the way that globalization has become a an irrational rationale for letting global economic policy be driven by the capricious and irrational mass moods of the world capital markets, which is not especially good for global justice. Wheen is well-read in politics and business, and he brings his knowledge to bear, comparing the dot.com and Enron bubbles to the South Sea bubble and other manic swings of the capital markets.