‘Isms and ‘Ologies:
(Vintage, 2007)
“By compressing all major and most minor religious, political, and artistic movements into a single volume, he has distilled the madness of mankind: its tendency to create sects and cults and private clubs of the mind….[Goldwag] has achieved something few authors achieve, and crated in the same package a path to understanding and a highway to pleasure.”
—Michael Lewis, in the introduction
All the Movements, Ideologies, and Doctrines That Have Shaped Our World
“’The more ’isms, the more schisms,’ Goldwag writes, giving incisive histories of religious splits from creationism to gnosticism to hermeticism; scientific camps from Lysenkoism to string theory to uncertainty principle (not all partisans are -ists) and economics from Keynsianism to monetarism to today’s hot-buttoned protectionism.”
—William Safire, The New York Times Magazine
“A lexicon of more than 450 enduring truths, cast-off notions, newly minted ideas and historical chimeras, from Abolitionism to Zoroastrianism…. Mr. Goldwag manages to keep his erudition lively and his scope wide indeed. Perhaps only the late Mortimer Adler at his top-loftiest could have sallied forth so bravely against the cognitive monsters of collective experience.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A genuinely compelling and entertaining read.”
—Stephen Fry
“Highly enjoyable….I already feel smarter.”
—Meg Wolitzer
All of my books can be purchased through Penguin/Random House. Click here for a full listing.