Read it, and you'll be sceptical of 'professional' number crunching for ever more. Simply brilliant.

Probably the most prophetic thinker on politics, economics, literature, and modern culture in general that we have in the English-speaking world. I read this when it came out in 1992 and it made me rethink a lot of what I had learned as an economics undergrad. It contains an accurate account of the dotcom crash that would come ten years after publication as well as one of the best essays that I have ever read about the modern novel. His chapter on the status of celebrities in our society should be required reading for all who consider themselves to be citizens.

Saul is often difficult to read, and not because of his style or even because of the complicated subjects. He is difficult to read because he directly challenges so many things that you thought you knew or things you may have taken for granted. It is very hard when someone points out to you that a lot of what makes up your intellectual foundation needs to be rebuilt. I have never been a conservative, but I studied economics at a big state university in the Midwest where only a very conservative variety of that subject is offered. I can't remember any of my Indiana University professors who had anything good to say about the government providing services for citizens. The private sector and free markets were talked about with almost religious deference. In the 16 years since the publication of Voltaire's Bastards we have seen the triumph of European socialism over American free market economics. While we in America have been listening to conservatives preach about the evils of all taxation, Europeans have been building a far more equitable society that provides better for all citizens.

I owe it to this book that I have been able to completely deconstruct the childish neo-con arguments about the role government should play in the making of societies. I can't understand why John Ralston Saul isn't a household name in America. He is the most prescient thinker I have ever read. We continue to give voice to some of the most myopic pundits who haven't had a single forward-thinking idea yet we ignore someone who has had it all right from before the beginning. When this book came out it was almost completely ignored in the USA. I remember that it was only reviewed in a single American publication (Playboy magazine). We need more clear thinkers like Saul and fewer gasbags.

Encyclopedic, vast, overwritten in parts but contentious in the right sort of ways....

We depend on the judgement of "experts" who are adherent to the systems of their intellect and the process of their own convictions to mark up our world.

True today, true tomorrow.

He misses the boat quite a few times here but when he's on, he's ON.

I read this after graduting from school (SUNY-Purchase!) and it gave me plenty of restless nights, believe me.

It's almost like he prophesized the rise of the neocons, who were just about to break through as this book came out.

FAIL. Dreadful, dumb trash — a farrago of received ideas pretending to be thinking — and intellectually dishonest into the bargain. Worse — Where the hell was the editor? A good editor would have looked out for the reader and reduced 656 pages of repetitive, jejune cant to something befitting the smallness of the thought. This is a pamphlet, padded — outrageously — to book-length. This recalls Truman Capote's remark, "That's not writing. That's typing."

Best non-fiction book ever!

This may be 20 years old, but there is nothing in it that isn't relevant now.

Best book I've read which criticizes western political thought and action. It is the book which has probably shaped my political views the most. Provides what I think is a very fair look at the fundamental logic that operates in most western democracies.

a bit thought provoking

I always find myself conflicted about the non-fiction of John Ralston Saul: he's a fearless thinker who provides illuminating and ofttimes counterintuitive insights to historical, political, cultural and societal patterns that seem to have eluded the grasp of others; and yet he is also prone to mistaking opinion for fact, assertion for truth, calumny for critique, and strenuously whiffing at pitches for every one that he hammers into play. In the course of a single page I can find myself nodding vigorously in agreement and tossing the book aside in exasperation.

Voltaire's Bastards brings these Two-Sides-of-Saul together in spades; however, it's a book that I have few regrets for sticking with and following all the way through. Prescient in many ways, providing riveting essays on the world of arms-trading and the evolution of the novel in the twentieth-century, taking aim at his favorite target, the bureaucratic and technocratic elite that has claimed access to power for itself in the name of an exclusionary specialism—all the while lining up a disparate collection of personages for textual execution based at times upon naught but circumstantial evidence or Saulian speculation whilst unable to convincingly fit his chief bugaboos under the titular despotism of Reason. Both well-written and overwritten, pithy and bombastic, now over a quarter-century old and dated but still edifying and relevant: intellectual stews like Voltaire's Bastards are always at least worth sampling.

I didn't like this ...

One glaring problem with the book is it's size - my 20th anniversary edition runs to 741 pages ... and it's an unnecessary 741 pages ... If Saul had concentrated more on concepts rather than going into excruciating detail of specific cases, the book could have been cut down to a third of it's size, maybe gaining a little potency along the way.

Another big problem is in Saul's efforts to use reason to undermine reason - I suppose that if he's wrong then at least he'll be proven right ...

Also: From the very start to the very end of the book there's an implicit bias against reason. Saul chooses to focus on the role of reason in events such as war and economic exploitation while ignoring positive aspects such as increased life expectancy or the eradication of some diseases. Even within his chosen focus he takes a far too narrow approach.

One (of many) examples is when he describes the Nazi holocaust as 'a perfectly rational act'. If he means that there was *a* reasoning behind it then he is correct but he *never* considers the fact that there would also have been a reasoning (in one form or another) behind *every other* option available to the Nazis. For this reason, the focus of the book should have been a consideration of the *evaluation of reason* rather than taking a simplistic binary reason / unreason approach. Reason does not just apply to the structures in place - it applies to *every* structure that *can* be put in place, whether it leads to good or bad outcomes. This is a problem that recurs throughout the book.

Another gripe: I really don't see why at one point Saul tries to paint Voltaire as the father of western reason - surely that role falls to Socrates ... as far as I'm concerned, cynicism was Voltaire's main contribution. (Saul seems to just cut the Greeks out of the picture at every opportunity - for example in discussing the Social Contract he doesn't even mention Plato's Crito, which should surely be the starting point for the topic ...)

There are other things I didn't like (for example I think there should have been more said about the impact of reason on religion - surely an obvious area to cover in depth ... maybe it's impact hasn't been negative enough for Saul ...), but all things considered, this isn't particularly good.

Changed my life...

Maybe it's just me, but there's something quite difficult about reading this book. Perhaps it's the way the author expresses himself. Perhaps it's the way that at one point it is writing about corruption in society and the next moment it veers into an exploration of modern art. However, it was a fantastic book to read because it made me question our Western 'civilisation' and provided food for thought about many of the issues that it's clear we have been experiencing for quite some time.