A Short History of Stupid - The Decline of Reason and Why Public Debate Makes Us Want to Scream

Recently, overwhelming mutual despair at the faltering quality of public debate and the apparent death of logic and reason has driven writers Helen Razer and Bernard Keane to the desperate act of befriending each other. Over many long rants against the state of the world and the way people write about it, govern it and behave in it, they decided that Never Have Things Been So Bad. To remedy (or at least assuage) the current ubiquity of Stupid they decided that a book describing its nature and inexorable rise must be written. What is Stupid? Stupid is the rejection of the discomfort of intellectual rigour in favour of the mentally comfortable and convenient. Razer and Keane skewer everything that has made them want to shoot the TV lately: climate change denial, vaccination denial, fanaticism, paternalism, moral panic, New Ageism, the War on Terror, conspiracy theories, the internet, the mental health industry, conspicuous compassion, postmodernism and the cult of 'I'. This book is angry, funny, savage, smart, provocative, infuriating and incendiary. It has echoes of de Botton in that it is conversant with the history of thought, but it is a lot more disrespectful. It is as rude and as inflammatory as O'Rourke and as penetrating and unforgiving as Hitchens. It is funny, but it is also at once a provocation and a comfort for those with like minds. Above all, it will inspire debate, reassure the terminally frustrated and outrage the righteously Stupid. It is a book whose time has definitely come....