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´The most prescient of British public intellectuals´ Pankaj Mishra, Financial Times

Updated with a new foreword and two new chapters of John Gray´s writing.

Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why do beliefs that humanity can be improved end in farce or horror? Is atheism a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, one of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our time, smashes through civilization´s long cherished beliefs, overturning our view of the world and our place in it.

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Gray´s dissection of modern delusion, cant and wishful thinking is to be welcomed in this moment of convulsion ... This is a book to learn from and argue with Ben Wilson Literary Review

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John Gray´s major books include Straw Dogs, Black Mass and The Silence of Animals. A second edition of his essays, Gray´s Anatomy, was published in 2016. He now principally writes for the New Statesman.

John Gray is most recently the acclaimed author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. He is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the University of London.

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