"How are citizens to enter into a public debate if the concepts which define our society and decide the manner in which we are governed are open neither to understanding nor to questioning?" According to bestselling novelist and essayist John Ralston Saul, the ramifications of asking this question are enormous. We live in an era of specialization, where decision makers, administrators, and process-minded experts have fortified their positions of authority by insulating themselves from public accountability. An important instrument in their ascension has been language; or more precisely, a language so technically specific and laden with jargon that it has isolated the individual citizen.

John Ralston Saul is one of Canada’s leading social and political commentators. He is the author of numerous books on philosophy and contemporary politics, including Voltaire’s Bastards, Reflections Of A Siamese Twin, and most recently The Collapse of Globalism. Saul was the Massey lecturer in 1995, and won the 1996 Governor General’s Award for nonfiction for The Unconscious Civilization, based on those lectures. He is the former president of PEN Canada and the creator of the acclaimed LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture series. A regular speaker and panelist across Canada and internationally, John Ralston Saul currently lives in Toronto.

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“I can hear the corporate squeals. This flagellation makes for a good read." - Ottawa Citizen

“No current book—anywhere—is as acidly lucid about the new globalized economics that are steamrolling custom, culture and civilization in the world. Fascinating, funny and best of all profoundly useful.” - Books in Canada

“A remarkably thoroughgoing critique of folly.” - Newsday

“A big, juicy mudpie in the face of conventional wisdom… a welcome handbook to the confusions of the age. It encourages people not only to doubt, but to think for themselves. A dangerous book indeed. Perhaps the authorities should burn it now.” - Maclean's

“Very wise. And very funny.” - The Vancouver Sun