William Blake vs. the World

Powell's Midyear Roundup

The Best Books of 2022 (So Far)

There's something about Blake that speaks to me. Well... not so much "speak" as "slaps me across the face with both hands before shaking me by the shoulders while jumping up and down, ranting and raving about god knows what," and I love it. Sometimes though, it would be nice to understand those ravings a little better, and luckily, John Higgs, scribe of The KLF and I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, has admirably risen to the occasion. Recommended By Fletcher O., Powells.com

A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.

Poet, artist, and visionary, William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. His life passed without recognition and he worked without reward, often mocked, dismissed and misinterpreted. Yet from his ignoble end in a pauper's grave, Blake now occupies a unique position as an artist who unites and attracts people from all corners of society — a rare inclusive symbol of human identity.

Blake famously experienced visions, and it is these that shaped his attitude toward politics, sex, religion, society, and art. Thanks to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, we are now in a better position to understand what was happening inside that remarkable mind and gain a deeper appreciation of his brilliance. His timeless work, we will find, has never been more relevant.

In William Blake vs the World we return to a world of riots, revolutions, and radicals; discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s; and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics, and comparative religion.

Taking the reader on a wild adventure into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into fascinating context. And although the journey begins with us trying to understand him, we will ultimately discover that it is Blake who helps us to understand ourselves.

"It was fun to witness Higgs's cogs turning, to hear his thoughts ricocheting against the walls of his internal archive of affinities, allusions and absorptions." — New York Times Book Review

"Higgs handles the complexities of Blake, particularly the later Blake, with adroit confidence, and in doing so he offers a crisp, ambitious and thoroughly contemporary introduction." — Times Literary Supplement

"Absolutely wonderful! This book managed to make Blake's mind and mythology understandable to me at last--for that I am truly grateful." — Terry Gilliam

John Higgs is the author of William Blake vs the World (his first book to be published in America) as well as other books published in Britain. John lives in England.