The cunning of unreason - John Dunn

Britain's greatest political historian and scientist shows in this unique book the nuts and bolts of how politics works.

Politics is inevitably disappointing. Why is this so?
Politics is important and obscure and difficult? Must it be so?
How can anyone even begin to understand politics?
In fact, why bother to try to understand it at all?

This, possibly the first genuinely, unblinkingly honest book about politics, endeavours to answer all these questions. The Cunning of Unreason shirks nothing, no aspect of political thought or theory. It explains first in the abstract (what is politics? etc.) and then makes this concrete, tying the ideas into a fascinating re-interpretation of Thatcher's Britain. Dunn shows how this lasted and then fell apart, in all its complexity. The focus then becomes more general, spanning ideas of state, judgment, corruption, democracy and its failings, economics, markets, etc, etc. The final part is one of consolidation: what is political science; what are the implications of our and the world's current political situation and how can we use this knowledge to choose better?

'As usual John Dunn asks questions about politics and the political process that few other scholars have thought of asking (or dared to ask). The Cunning of Unreason is a searching intellectual inquiry into the nature of political action; but it is an even more disturbing and acute essay upon the nature of political thought. It is idiosyncratic, brilliant, and very original.'PAUL KENNEDY, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers