Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom

To the other reviews, i would add that this is of the kind of writing that is hard to find after ca. 1930 - one of those rare reminders that the voice of a whole, balanced person is not a neutered voice but a bracingly strong one. Page for page, the writing is easy to read but instantly provides a deep and complex mirror for your own life - kind of like D.H.Lawrence (as an essayist) combined with Gary Zukav. If that seems a stretch, it's an important one to make - e.g, Edward's treatment of Chomsky by way of Joe Campbell is indispensable. Best of all, Edwards works great references and a keen sense of cultural history into this liberating screed, without ever leaving the here and now for the airy heights of intellectualism, a la 'Irrational Man' or Colin Wilson, etc. Do yourself and every other living being a favor and give this a shot - it's closer to a Western Mahabharata then anything else you're likely to find. I feel John Lennon's ghost smiling every time i crack this book open.

"Burning" is that peculiarly ambitious reading experience which defies categorization. I've personally purchased and given it to nearly a half-dozen friends. The book assumes a need for personal autonomy in a society so committed to denying, even killing that assumption. This book should be cross-references under cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, politics. If you appreciated Phillip Slater's seminal "The Pursuit of Loneliness" or like music by Billy Bragg and Pete Seeger and Sweet Honey in the Rock; if you resent coercion and authority; if you're glad General Pinochet is under arrest; if you question the assumptions of psychology, you'll enjoy this book.

This great book goes to the heart of the matter in dealing with the twin (really the same) problems of individuals feeling f*****-up and the planet being gobbled-up and left for dead by the same. Namely, the Industrial/ Muscular Kristianity paradigm of the last thousand or two years is wholly inappropriate for the health and well-being of life on the planet - very much including the emotional well-being of modern-day humans. Daniel Quinn calls the enemy "Mother Culture" in his book Ishmael, and I daresay the author of this book would agree. Not a depressing book at all, but in fact is very invigorating and inspiring.

The depth and revelations had me riveted to every page. One of the best books I have read in the last ten years.

Toward the end of this probing book, Edwards quotes the comments of a pre-glasnost Soviet visitor to the United States (I paraphrase the quote here): Your media all report the same stories, they deliver the same opinions. How does your country manage this so peacefully? In our country, the government uses coercion to achieve this result. Here it happens by itself. Is there a conspiracy in developed countries to tell the populace only what government and business want it to know? Is big business in collusion with government to keep the public fat, happy and ignorant? No, says Edwards. It's not a conspiracy in the conventional sense where an elite cadre writes the script and controls the action. It's something far more disquieting. It's a more subtle and effective kind of force than the old guns and gulag tyranny. It has a lot to do with self-delusion. Weaving in generous threads of Chomsky's thought (a man the media extolls as the most brilliant in his field, yet dismisses as a hopeless crackpot when he addresses government and society), Edwards makes the case that many of the world's ills are attributable to the ethos of consumerism and the social and economic structures that perpetuate it. Edwards' book makes the reader look at society, business and government from a different perspective ... a perspective not meant to be comforting, rather a perspective meant to help the individual regain personal freedoms buried in the detrius of business as usual. This is not a summer take-to-the-beach book. But if you want some tools to cut through the political smoke that will swirl this fall, it's well worth the time.