I rarely stop reading books halfway through, but I just couldn't finish this one. Although a good critique -- which almost reads as a satire --, on how bloated bureaucracies and state technocrats are running the show, Saul spent too much time in the abstract.
And although I understand and agree with a lot, 600 pages of such a diatribe is just too much. It feels repetitive at time and I often felt like he was beating the same dead horse again and again. I reckon that he could have distilled the exposé down to 200 pages and the message would have been just as efficient, if not more.

A dense and nuanced attack on rationalism as the cause of modern malaise. The book is imperfect, to be sure. It is obtuse to a fault, with the polemicist’s penchant for massaging everything into the service of the narrative, a tendency that is if anything exacerbated by the erudition of the author. Much, especially recent military history, is warped or casually read in order to support his point, and his judgment of important historical personages like Haig and Grant is boiled down to a few facile, uncharitable judgments. Or in Jefferson’s case, to an equally obtuse sunny judgment.

But the book is more ambitious than this, and despite three decades of intervening history its central points have held up pretty well. Its predictive powers are imperfect; the tech boom saw the emergence of some true entrepreneurs (people who do and who risk rather than simply peddling figures), inflation was “tamed” and the solution - low interest rates - proved as susceptible to bubbles as the inflationary period, and much of the former Eastern Bloc has seen considerable and real growth.

But the notion of the technocrat as the sine qua non of contemporary Western society is dead on, and the notion of the fundamental emptiness of the rationalist project in contemporary form, with the eclipse of religion, the demise of purpose, and the multi-pronged attack on communal ties (via atomization) and communal obligations (through a bastardized form of hyperindividualism) has proven not only durable but remarkably prescient. 2008, deaths of despair, identity politics, and the role of the “military-industrial complex” in prolonging and shaping GWOT conflicts, all would slide easily into a postscript without necessitating an amendment of his central tenets.

Everyone should read this book

Some excellent passages, but a lot of other stuff to be endured in order to get to them.

One of the early modern books to question the possible throat hold that reason has on our culture...arguably reason has an insufficient grip but that is the tension and the argument that this book provokes. Though nearly 20 years old this is a must read starting point for any investigation of the argument that may reign for the next twenty years as well.

One of those books that smack you in the face and you dont know what hit you. Brilliant, dense and important to make some sense of today's absurd self destructive western "progress". Im a big fan of Saul.

Another one I'm so glad I got to in my early 20's, when I had time & focus & the memory impairment was still relatively minimal.

It's like if War and Peace met Chomsky, but like, by a Canadian... one reviewer called it "a hand grenade disguised as a book." Definitely a sanity-anchor in a despairing "what the actual fuck is wrong with this shit" world, then for sure and now more than ever.

John Ralston Saul argues that society has been barking up the wrong tree for ages. Forever really. Nice insights into Loyola and the Jesuits, Rob McNamara and other people in history. Gives you a sense that we are doing really well at going nowhere but doesn't offer anything to correct it. Our process orientated, bureaucratic, "reason" underpinned society constantly talks double speak and fails to take many worthwhile actions. Read it before taking an ITIL course and try to keep your mouth shut through training. I dare you.

Enlightening and disconcerting

Brilliant book. The writing is tedious in parts but the ideas are very important.

If John Ralston Saul had good politics this book would be much easier to read and more coherent, the problem isn't reason it's capitalism. Capitalists are the enemies of everything that slows their accumulation of wealth including morals, reason, and people that object to being exploited. Because John Ralston Saul has bad politics this book is often incoherent and rambling and dumb punctuated with the occasional excellent point that is inadequately contextualized. Maybe if you read this when it came out you'd find it more insightful because critiques of capital were less popular then but even then it's book in dire need of a good edit.

Read this.