The Madness of Crowds

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What to expect

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year

Updated with a new afterword by the author

'Douglas Murray fights the good fight for freedom of speech ... A truthful look at today's most divisive issues' Jordan B. Peterson

'[Murray’s] latest book is beyond brilliant and should be read, must be read, by everyone' Richard Dawkins

Are we living through the great derangement of our times?

In The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray investigates the dangers of ‘woke’ culture and the rise of identity politics. In lively, razor-sharp prose he examines the most controversial issues of our moment: sexuality, gender, technology and race, with interludes on the Marxist foundations of ‘wokeness’, the impact of tech and how, in an increasingly online culture, we must relearn the ability to forgive.

One of the few writers who dares to counter the prevailing view and question the dramatic changes in our society – from gender reassignment for children to the impact of transgender rights on women – Murray’s penetrating book, now published with a new afterword taking account of the book's reception and responding to the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, clears a path of sanity through the fog of our modern predicament.

Critics Review

  • Douglas Murray fights the good fight for freedom of speech … A truthful look at today’s most divisive issues

    Jordan B. Peterson, bestselling author of 12 Rules for Life
  • [Murray’s] latest book is beyond brilliant and should be read, must be read, by everyone. He mercilessly exposes the hypocrisy and embarrassingly blatant contradictions that run rife through the current ‘woke’ vogue.

    Richard Dawkins
  • Whether one agrees with him or not, Douglas Murray is one of the most important public intellectuals today.

    Bernard-Henri Lévy
  • How can you not know about The Madness of Crowds? It’s actually the book I’ve just finished. You can’t just not read these books, not know about them.

    Tom Stoppard
  • Simply brilliant. Reading it to the end, I felt as though I’d just drawn my first full breath in years. At a moment of collective madness, there is nothing more refreshing – or, indeed, provocative – than sanity.

    Sam Harris, author of five New York Times bestsellers and host of the Making Sense podcast.
  • An abomination

    Titania McGrath, author of Woke: A Guide to Social Justice

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