Francis Wheen

This biography presents Karl Marx as a man of both brilliance and frailty, as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English gentleman, as an angry agitator, as a gregarious and convivial host and as a devoted family man.

A Life

Karl Marx

In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next 25 years. In Britain, an era of weary consensualist politics was displaced by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, whose ambition was to reassert Victorian values. In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the 20th century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History. reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of mumbo-jumbo. Modernity was challenged by a gruesome alliance of pre-modernists and post-modernists, medieval theocrats and New Age mystics. It was as if the Enlightenment had never happened. personalities of the post-political era - including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama Bin-Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer - while charting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century. From UFO scares to dotcom mania, his impassioned polemic describes a period in the world's history when everything began to stop making sense.

A Short History of Modern Delusions

How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World

First published in 1867, 'Das Kapital' was an original criticism of the capitalist world. Its ideas would alter the course of history and affect the lives of millions. But, as Wheen explains, 'Das Kapital' is in no way a dry economic tome.

A Biography

Marx's Das Kapital

رأس المال لكارل ماركس 

The Bizarre Life of a Fraudulent Genius

The Irresistible Con

A Biography (Books That Shook the World)

Marx's 'Das Kapital'

كتب هزَّت العالم قصة الكتاب الذي جلب (لكارل ماركس) الشهرة وألهم الثورات في أرجاء العالم، بقلم الكاتب الذي وضع سيرةً لـ (ماركس) بيع منها أكثر من 100000 نسخة. "كتــاب يبعث على البهجة... ويصوّب أولئك الذين نشـــؤوا على الاعتقــاد بأنَّ عمل (ماركس) جامد ومتزمت عقائدياً... ما يقدّمه (وين) هو صورة للرجل نابضة بالحياة". الصنداي تلغراف، المملكة المتحدة. "لقد اكتفى الفلاسفة بتفسير العالم، بشتّى الطرق؛ والمهم هو تغييره"، هكذا كتب (ماركس) في العام 1845؛ ومن هنا كان كشفه الملتهب لذلك العالم الرأسمالي الجديد الذي عرفته (الحقبة الفيكتورية) في كتابه (رأس المال) الذي أثّرت أفكاره على ملايين البشر وغيّرت مجرى التاريخ العالمي. يرسم (وين) لوحة (ديكنزية) للكفاح الذي خاضه (ماركس) على مدى عشرين عاماً بغية إتمام رائعته. وقد كان لـ (رأس المال)، الذي حُمِلَ به في شقّة من غرفتين في لندن وسط الشجارات السياسية والمآسي الشخصية، أن يترك أثره على عدد لا يُحْصَى من المفكّرين والكتّاب والثوريين. وما دامت الرأسمالية باقيةً بمنغّصاتها ستبقى الحاجة قائمة إلى قراءة هذا العمل الأساسي وفهمه.

Marx's "Das Kapital": A Biography (Books That Shook the World)

رأس المال لكارل ماركس

The 1970s were a theme park of mass paranoia. Strange Days Indeed tells the story of the decade when a distinctive “paranoid style” emerged and seemed to infect all areas of both private and public life, from high politics to pop culture. The sense of paranoia that had long fuelled the conspiracy theories of fringe political groups then somehow became the norm for millions of ordinary people. And to make it even trickier, a certain amount of that paranoia was justified. Watergate showed that the governments really were doing illegal things and then trying to cover them up. Though Nixon may have been foremost among deluded world leaders he wasn't the only one swept up in the tide of late night terrors. UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson was convinced that the security services were plotting his overthrow, while many of them were convinced he was a Soviet agent. Idi Amin and his alleged cannibalism, the CIA's role in the Chilean coup, the Jonestown cult, the Indian state of emergency from '75 to '77 and more are here turned into a delicious carnival of the deranged—and an eye-opening take on an oft-derided decade—by a brilliant writer with an acute sense of the absurd.

The 1970s: The Golden Days of Paranoia

Strange Days Indeed

The Golden Age of Paranoia

La biografía más humana, cercana y amena de uno de los filósofos más influyentes de todos los tiempos Las ideas de Karl Marx son probablemente las que más han influido en el mundo después de las de Jesucristo. En esta apasionante y en ocasiones muy divertida biografía se nos presenta por primera vez a Karl Marx en su faceta más humana. Un apasionado agitador, que pasó casi toda su vida encerrado en la sala de lectura del Museo Británico; un hombre sociable y simpático que, sin embargo, acabó enemistado con casi todos sus amigos; un abnegado padre de familia que dejó embarazada a la criada; un intelectual profundamente serio al que le gustaba beber, contar chistes y fumar puros y un hijo pródigo al que su madre le dijo: «Habría preferido que reunieras un capital en vez de escribir sobre él.» La vida y las ideas de Marx, su encanto y su cólera, se muestran en toda su complejidad y contradicción: la de un brillante y provocador filósofo que vivió, como en los libros de Dickens, los tiempos difíciles de un caballero venido a menos. Otros escritores y periodistas opinan... «Leería cualquier cosa escrita por Wheen, incluso una biografía de Marx.» Nick Hornby «Este libro es una delicia.» Niall Ferguson «Un libro magnífico, divertido y fascinante, un triunfo de Wheen.» A.N.Wilson

A major biography of the man who, more than any other, made the twentieth century. Written by an author of great repute.

A History

Television

Looks at the life of the father of Communism focusing primarily on the human side of the man rather than his works

In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In America and Britain, an era of weary consensus was displaced by the arrival of a political marriage of fiery idealists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher transformed politics with a combination of breezy charm and assertive "Victorian values." In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1,300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the twentieth century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History. What colonized the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of idiocy, the proof of which was to be found in every state, every work-place, and every library. In Idiot Proof, columnist Francis Wheen brilliantly evokes the key personalities of the post-political era?including Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama bin Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologer?while lamenting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century. In turn comic, indignant, outraged and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, Idiot Proof is a masterful depiction of the daftness of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

In 1971 a curious new character appeared on the London academic scene, her name was Charlotte Bach. She was a former lecturer at the University of Budapest and she had a new theory of sex and evolution. At the height of her cult status, she would be compared to Einstein and Freud.

Who was Dr Charlotte Bach?

In his obituary, The Times described Tom Driberg as “an unreliable man of undoubted distinction...the admiration and despair of his friends and acquaintances.” An Oxford Socialist, Driberg was also a flamboyant and promiscuous homosexual, an intriguer and a gossip, and a friend to the Sitwells and the Krays. Living in an era when the establishment looked after its own and the press looked the other way, Driberg was able to shatter almost every notion of polite society. His was a famously indulgent life that included a highly public wedding just a few years after he had concluded an extravagant series of affairs with soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Francis Wheen’s previous book was the highly praisedKarl Marx: A Life.

Tom Driberg : Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw

The Soul of Indiscretion

Karl Marx. Una vita

His review has got to be 'in' by mid-day tomorrow ... At about 9 pm his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit ... skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each down with the comment, 'God, what tripe!' ... Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases - 'a book that no one should miss', 'something memorable on every page' - jump into their places like iron fillings obeying the magnet. Thus did George Orwell, writing forty years ago in Confessions of a Book Reviewer, describe the labours of a typical literary hack. Judging by the incestuous stew of debts and allegiances that dominates today's world of books, precious little has changed over the intervening decades. The servility of reviewers continues to counterpoint the vanity of authors and the greed of their publishers. Yet within this society of mutual admiration, lazy writing and genuflection to established hierarchy, one repository of fearless literary criticism stands out: the 'Literary Review' section of the satirical magazine Private Eye. Lord Gnome's Literary Companion assembles, in thematic order, the best of these columns to present an astringent, rude and funny survey of publishers and the published. It identifies new genres - such as the 'non-book' celebrity vehicle - as well as giving due recognition to those who, against all odds, genuinely have something to say. It devotes review space to authors who, whilst dominating the bestseller lists, are all but ignored by the literary establishment - and it does so without the breathless celebration of the popular observed by too many practitioners of 'cultural studies'. It probes the unseen forces that police our literary culture - the literary agents, the cross-media magnates, the PR gigolos. In keeping with the Private Eye tradition, the contributors are anonymous, giving writers the freedom they cannot find in other publications. For Lord Gnome's reviewers there are no sacred cows, no special favours, no treacly euphemisms. It's messy, dangerous work, but someone has to do it.

Lord Gnome's Literary Companion

His review has got to be 'in' by mid-day tomorrow ... at about 9 pm his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit ... skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each one down with the comment, 'God, what tripe!' ... Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases--'a book that no one should miss', 'something memorable on every page'--jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet. Thus did George Orwell, writing forty years ago in Confessions of a Book Reviewer, describe the labours of a typical literary hack. Precious little has changed over the intervening decades; the servility of the satirical magazine Private Eye. Lord Gnome's Literary Companion assembles, in thematic order, the best of these columns to present an astringent, rude and funny survey of publishers and the published.

An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century. An intellectual call to arms, Francis Wheen’s Sunday Times bestseller is one of 2004’s most talked about books.

Francis Wheen

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