Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern by John Gray

Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern by John Gray

'The suicide warriors who attacked Washington and New York on September 11th, 2001, did more than kill thousands of civilians and demolish the World Trade Center. They destroyed the West's ruling myth.' So John Gray begins this short, powerful book on the belief that has dominated our minds for a century and a half - the idea that we are all, more or less, becoming modern and that as we become modern we will become more alike, and at the same time more familiar and more reasonable. Nothing could be further from the truth, Gray argues. Al Qaeda is a product of modernity and of globalisation, and it will not be the last group to use the products of the modern world in its own monstrous way. Gray pulls up by the roots the myth that the human condition can be remade by science and progress or political engineering. He describes with mordant irony the rise of Positivists, the strange sect that put science and technology at the centre of the cult and developed a religion of humanity. Through their influence on economists, politicians and biologists, they still powerfully affect the way we think. Gray looks at the various attempts to remake humanity, from the Bolshevik and Nazi disasters to the utopian experiments of modern radical Islam and the dreams of the prophets of globalisation. And he gives a scathing account of the real sources of conflict in the world, of American power and its illusions, and of the ways in which cultures will resist the reshaping we might wish on them.

John Gray is a political philosopher, author, and former School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His books include Seven Types of Atheism, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780571238422
ISBN 10	0571238424
Title	Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern
Author	John Gray
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Faber & Faber
Year published	2007-04-19
Number of pages	176
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.