"A little Molotov cocktail of a book" wrote Fritz Lanham about this opera of the notorious rebel author John Gray. I think this is the ultimately definition for it. The book, as far as I got it, is a mix of different provocative ideas that the author shaked and wrote down trying meanwhile to unifiyng them. Some of these ideas are really interesting (for example Gray links Communism and Nazism as not-so-bastard sons of the Enlightement, and reckons the latter one in some way a Christian inheritance), other ones a little nebulous, especially when you'll cope with the last chapters. In demolishing past Utopias Gray does a great job, not so much, I think, in proposing an altenative. Also the explanation of the US invasion of Irak is well done, it is clearly stated how it was meaningless, counterproductive, avoidable, unjustified and not prepared. Anyway, the main feature of the book is, according to me, its lackness of coherence: sooner or later reading it you'll have to deal with matters you don't know how the narrative arrived to (and I think neither the author does). Still if your approach to the book is a little choosy in dealing with this pot of ideas among which not all are deeply explained (some because they can't be), according to me it is worth reading it.
...Continua
