In a brilliant series of essays, Bertrand Russell puts his challenging skepticism to work against prejudice and superstition. With savage insight and urbane wit, The Will to Doubt attacks any and all obstacles to the rational way of life. Russell's thoughts are as lively and pertinent today as when they were written.

His topics range from the defects of the educational system to the failure of belief among the younger generation, from our mistaken concepts of democracy to the ever-present threat to freedom throughout the world--even in the West, which prides itself so greatly on being free. Above all, he lashed out at the respectable, the orthodox, the conforming, "the whole cast-iron discipline of modern industrial society" and the tyranny of unexamined ideas.

Essays include "Can Men Be Rational," "Free Thought and Official Propaganda," "On the Value of Scepticism," "On Youthful Cynicism," "Is Science Superstitious?," ""Useless" Knowledge," "What is the Soul?," "The Ancestry of Fascism," "Stoicism and Mental Health," "Modern Homogeneity," "Men versus Insects," and "On Comets."