Culture Of Complaint

Robert Hughes

Editions

Review

'[A] polity obsessed with therapies and filled with distrust of formal politics; sceptical of authority and prey to superstition; its political language corroded by fake pity and euphemism.'

So the author describes the America of the late eighties and early nineties - but to how many countries do these words apply just as well today?  In three relatively short essays, Hughes examines the war between PC and its enemies, waged in university faculties, corporations and other institutions, where politics, history and art are reduced to the status of weapons.

It is a wonderfully stimulating book, which students, academics, politicians, social workers et al should be encouraged to read - in the hope that some of the commonsense fairness Hughes displays will rub off on them.  Some hope. - review by Dan Fenton