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The I Index

Bland Fanatics: Liberals, the West, and the Afterlives of Empire

Maybe someday

46

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

32/100

Critics

17/100

Scholars

90/100

Author:

Pankaj Mishra

Publisher:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Date:

October 6, 2020

A collection of critical essays on the political mania plaguing the West, that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and "humanitarian" war.

What The Reviewers Say

Murali Kamma,
The New York Journal of Books
Bland Fanatics remains timely, addressing an issue that consumes us: race.
Frank Guan,
Bookforum
Bland Fanatics has its pleasures.
Daniel Immerwahr,
Foreign Policy
[Bland Fanatics] lays out the case in essays dating back to 2008. Reading them now, while trapped in an apartment surrounded by strategic reserves of canned food and toilet paper, it’s hard not to think: You know, he might have had a point..
Damon Linker,
The New York Times Book Review
With chapters telling different aspects of this story across numerous regions and historical eras, Mishra supplies readers with material to construct an alternative to the liberal Grand Narrative.