At the moment, I am reading John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West".

Now, before anyone calls him a communist, he does not support communism. He equally delivers intellectual boardsides against Right and Left.

A very interesting read for someone who believes totally in man's ability to be rational (me)

Here are a few samples:

"The rational elites have pushed the causes of modernization and efficiency with such assurance and persistence that any failure must be blamed on having gone neither far or fast enough." pg 257, Part 2: Scenes From A System That's Doesn't Work, CHapter 10: In the Service of the Greater Self.

"Our inexhaustible supply of facts has unexpectedly made everything true and false. The power of expertise has obscured the causes of both success and failure." pg175.

"Immediate answers and absolute truths are the daily bread of rational civilisation. No attempt is made to identify recurring patterns for fear that memory may be reconstituted." pg 175

And finally:

"The principles of Erasmus and Richelieu have been carried to such a preposterous extreme that the encouragement of such retention (of information, basically the practice of secrecy) has become a religion of constipation." pg 287, Chapter 12: The Art of the Secret.