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Fools, Frauds and Firebrands

Thinkers of the New Left

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands cover

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands

Thinkers of the New Left

Quantity
Pre-order. Available 25 Jun 2026
$36.00

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

A devastating critique of New Left thinking.

In Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Roger Scruton first surveys and then deconstructs the golden idols of left wing thought from the 1960s to the present day. He dissects the hollow works of Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson, Galbraith and Dworkin, Sartre and Foucault and exposes the lack of coherence in the works of Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou and Žižek.

Scruton ponders why the humanities have become so unambiguously aligned to the left, and reveals how fully such thinking has seized the academy in its grasp. In this provocative, compelling and highly entertaining book he explains why empty rhetoric abounds over careful analysis and blatant nonsense over respectable logic, in a shattering demolition of some of today's most fashionable philosophers.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 What is Left?
2 Resentment in Britain: Hobsbawm and Thompson
3 Disdain in America: Galbraith and Dworkin
4 Liberation in France: Sartre and Foucault
5 Tedium in Germany: Downhill to Habermas
6 Nonsense in Paris: Althusser, Lacan and Deleuze
7 Culture Wars Worldwide: The New Left from Gramsci to Said
8 The Kraken Wakes: Badiou and Žižek
9 What is Right?

Index of names
Index of subjects

Product details

Published 25 Jun 2026
Format Audiobook
Duration 12 hours and 0 minutes
ISBN 9781399435918
Imprint Bloomsbury Continuum
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Roger Scruton

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the gre…

Narrator

Kris Dyer

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