Gray's Anatomy

Why is the human imagination to blame for the worst crimes of the 20th century? Why is progress a pernicious myth? And is today's atheism a byproduct of Christian faith? Celebrated by British intellectuals, one of the most original and iconoclastic thinkers of our time, John Gray is a master at asking disconcerting questions about the fantasies of democratic capitalism.

In Gray's Anatomy , John Gray remains sharp and brings together his most important articles, written over the past 30 years. A timeline of his intellectual output, it addresses topics such as atheism, scientific progress, and human reason. Here, Gray—also author of the controversial Straw Dogs and Black Mass—challenges the concepts of anthropocentrism and what it means to be human, and suggests new ways of thinking and feeling.

His skepticism about the nature and dreams of the Enlightenment is a corrective to all kinds of utopians. "The point of showing the fragility of everything seemingly solid is not to present an immutable truth and persuade the reader to accept it. Persuasion is a missionary enterprise, the goal of which is conversion. Rather, the goal is to present a record of what an observer saw, which readers can use as they wish," argues Gray.

Read as a vivisection of contemporary beliefs, these articles demonstrate the major changes in society over these decades. These essays cover diverse subjects, from Isaiah Berlin to Damien Hirst, from torture to environmentalism, from militant atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens to the war on terrorism and technology. But there is a common theme throughout the essays in Gray's Anatomy : the naive belief in the idea of progress that has guided politics, economics, and art.

Poignant and brilliant, Gray's Anatomy exposes the flaws in our most cherished beliefs and changes our view of the world and our place in it.