Wheen says that reason is in retreat. This book was published in 2004 and it is interesting to read it knowing about the Great Recession, the endless Iraq and Afghan wars and Trump. Trump is mentioned several times in the book as "the ostentatious 1980's mogul" and "the gloriously vulgar property developer".
Wheen takes on religion, economics, politics and shows how far off-base they have wandered from the Enlightenment ideals. But he fails to acknowledge that the US's founding fathers were not the average colonists of the time and there was a lot of superstition and fuzzy thinking going around then as now. But at least the leaders were rational.

Left in the Little Free Library