The Threat to Reason: How the Enlightenment Was Hijacked and How We Can Reclaim It
By Dan Hind
Verso £14.99, 184 pages
FT bookshop price: £11.99

One of the consequences of 9/11, subsequent attacks on the west and the so-called war on terror has been the rise of a militant atheism. This pits supposedly irrational religious fundamentalism and extremism against enlightened scientific reason. In this thoughtful polemic Dan Hind argues that we are being misled by a debased “Folk Enlightenment” which has little in common with the Enlightenment initiated by Bacon and championed by Voltaire, Hume and Kant.