Strange Days Indeed

Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen. The nostalgic whiff of the seventies evokes memories of loons and disco, Abba and Fawlty Towers. However, beneath the long hair it was really a theme park of mass paranoia. Strange Days Indeed tells the story of the decade that a young Francis Wheen walked into having pronounced he was dropping out to join the alternative society. Instead of the optimistic dreams of the sixties he found a world on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown, huddled over candles waiting for the next terrorist bomb, kidnapping or food shortage warning. Whether it was Nixon's demented behaviour in the White House, Harold Wilson's insistence that 'they' (whoever 'they' were) were out to get him, or the trial of Rupert Bear, it is a story almost too fantastical to be true. With his brilliantly acute sense of the absurd Francis Wheen slices through the pungent melange of mistrust and conspiratorial fever to expose the sickly form of a decade in which nations were brought to a sclerotic halt by power cuts, military coups, economic anarchy and the arrival of Uri Geller. Since the Great Crash of our generation barely a week passes without some allusion to that distant decade. As we are consumed by the heady stench of our own collective meltdown, there is no better guide than Francis Wheen to shine his Swiftian light on the true nature of the era that has returned to haunt us. Amidst the chaos Strange Days Indeed is an hilarious and jaw-droppingly revealing chronicle of the golden age of the paranoid style.

ISBN 0007244274   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780007244270 (What's this?)   Pages 388 Publisher HarperCollins Publishers   Weight (grammes) 589 Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd   Published in London Format Hardback   Height (mm) 240 Publication date 03 Sep 2009   Width (mm) 159 DEWEY 909.827   Academic level General

Introduction		The Paranoia Blues		1
1		Sleepless Nights		20
2		Stick it to the End, Sir		40
3		Going Underground		63
4		Madmen in Theory and Practice		96
5		Going on a Bear Hunt		121
6		Days of the Jackals		142
7		Such Harmonious Madness		151
8		Eternal Vigilance		166
9		Crossing the Psychic Frontier		185
10		The Road to Ruritania		201
11		Lords of the Beasts and Fishes		226
12		Morbid Symptoms		245
13		In the Jungle Labyrinth		272
		Conclusion: Let's Do the Time Warp Again		296
		Acknowledgments		312
		Notes		313
		Index		335

Priase for 'Mumbo Jumbo': 'A brilliant, eccentric book.' Observer 'Wheen has a Swiftian relish for exposing the cant that attends the 'new rationality'!bullshit's enema number one.' Tim Adams, Observer 'Hugely enjoyable!delightful reading.' Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Times 'Lightly and often hilariously told as it is, this book does make it clear that respect for truth and reason is retreating and mumbo-jumbo has a new confidence everywhere!This amusing, intelligent and elegantly argued book is as good a demonstration of the values it defends as could be imagined.' Philip Hensher, Spectator 'This book is a manifesto for rescuing the greatest philosophical movement of the past millennium. You have a choice: either read it or, pre-emptively shred your brain in anticipation of the coming darkness.' Independent on Sunday Named as a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Observer and Daily Telegraph.

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