Bland Fanatics

June 29, 2020
In this insightful, persuasive essay collection, London Review of Books contributor Mishra (The Age of Anger) blames contradictions inherent within liberalism for recent social and political upheavals in Europe and the U.S. In pieces written between 2008 and 2020 and covering events including the Iraq War, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump, Mishra faults Western leaders for continuing to claim that “liberalism is the only thing that can save civilization from chaos,” even as their policies bring about “devastation” abroad and “terrorism” at home. He argues that “liberalism’s complicity in Western imperialism” has been obvious for decades to intellectuals in exploited African and Asian countries, and laments the popularity of Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson, and other “unnerved” Western elites who “conflate their own relative diminution with a more general disintegration.” Well-informed reviews of books by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mark Greif, and Samuel Moyn identify some lights in an otherwise dim intellectual landscape, though Mishra stops short of advancing an alternative political and cultural ideology. Still, this erudite and dryly witty collection will help readers to make sense of the current age of discontent.

October 1, 2020
A columnist at Bloomberg View, Mishra is a prolific author of thought-provoking essays, 16 of which?originally published from 2009 to 2020?are collected here. They are opinionated, provocative, and amusing (ironically, these same words are often used to describe Mishra's b�te noire, historian Niall Ferguson). Mishra's subjects vary, but many feature the uneasy relationship between West and East, about which, he shows, Westerners know precious little. While most entries are stand-alone pieces dealing with large issues (liberalism, imperialists, colonialism, whiteness, etc.), there are also some book reviews, including takes on Katherine Boo's Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, which he praises, and Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, which he most definitely does not. Very little, it sometimes seems, earns his approbation, and his essays are often controversial: in one, he savages Barack Obama, while, in another, he damns Ta-Nehisi Coates with faint praise, if that. Some readers may find his work reminiscent, in tone and style, of the late Gore Vidal's; like Vidal, Mishra is always worth reading, even when his opinions might seem untenable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

October 23, 2020

Mishra's latest work, after Age of Anger, is a collection of essays written between 2009 and 2018 that detail how the American cultural belief in free-market liberalism as the achievement of Western civilization endures, despite evidence that the advantages of unregulated markets are hardly clear. Some pieces focus on how Cold War narratives about American exceptionalism remain at the heart of mainstream historical and political interpretations of our world, while others treat the way entrenched imperialist beliefs are bolstered by racism and cultural bias. Mishra's best essays treat figures in literature, from Salman Rushdie to Alexander Herzen, through whose work and reception he unveils, in another way, the perspectives we miss as long as the narrative of Western liberalism persists. The essays often leave readers with these welcome outlooks. Considering the collection as a whole, readers may wonder less about the evidence of neo-liberalism--which is ample enough--than the reasons behind it. The blandness of the neoliberal fanatics, whose views often warrant less analytical attention than given, at times overshadows the real merit of the essays, which bring into focus the blindness that persists in this long-discussed but still ubiquitous belief in the unmitigated benefits of free-market capital. VERDICT A sometimes dense, sometimes proactive collection of essays on current political ideologies. An optional purchase.--Jennifer Flaherty, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020

Author of the best-booked From the Ruins of Empire and the multi-starred Age of Anger, Bloomsberg View columnist Mishra famously takes on the overwrought, divisive political conversation that reigns worldwide. These collected essays, which carry a fresh introduction by Mishra, range from the clinging roots of colonialism to the fear of Islam to the shift away from Anglo-American hegemony.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.