Dr. W. Warren Wagar has just published a new edition of The Open Conspiracy through Praeger Press. Recently I asked Dr. Wagar to say a few words about his latest project and here is what he had to say:

“This edition of The Open Conspiracy is a reprint of the final version of What Are We to do With Our Lives?, which Wells first published in 1931. What Are We to do With Our Lives? was, as most Wellsians know, a revised and enlarged edition of The Open Conspiracy, first published in 1928 and then revised and re-issued in 1930.

The significance that Wells attached to this book is evidenced by the number of times he revised it, although the message throughout remained the same. The world was at a crisis point in its history, and a global movement of men and women of vision was needed to lead humankind out of the jungle of nation states to a scientifically managed cosmopolis.

I leave the text untouched, except for the correction of a few typographical errors, but I supply a 20,000-word critical introduction that places the book in the larger context of Wells's prophetic career and assesses what I regard as its strengths and shortcomings.

I argue that The Open Conspiracy may turn out to be the most important book published in the 20th Century, if ultimately we heed Wells's warnings and his call for world revolution.”

It is available in hardback under ISBN 0-275-97026-4, in paperback under ISBN 0-275-97539-8. The title is The Open Conspiracy: H.G. Wells on World Revolution, ed. W. Warren Wagar.

Hardcover Availability Date: 12/06/01
Available December 24, 2001
Retail Price: $30.00 ($44.95 Can./£21.99 UK) Westview Press
ISBN: 0-8133-3394-6

From the Perseus Books Group website:
"Nearing age 70, and in what would be the last decade of his life, H. G. Wells fell in love at least three times—once with the much younger Baroness Budberg, and soon thereafter with two well-born Americans, Constance Coolidge and Martha Gellhorn, twenty–five and forty years his junior, respectively. These would constitute what Wells himself described as his "last flounderings towards the wife idea" and demonstrate in many ways that Wells was driven less by his considerable intelligence than by his obsession to find his ideal lover – what he called his "lover-shadow." In Shadow Lovers, Andrea Lynn has created a fascinating study of the very personal side of one of this century's greatest thinkers. This self-proclaimed Don Juan was said to have "radiated" energy: intellectual, emotional, physical, and sexual. Drawing on papers recently made public by the Wells estate, Lynn documents Wells' relationship with each of these femmes fatales. She also paints a vivid portrait of the early part of this century in the United States, Paris, and London."

Andrea Lynn is a news and features writer at the University of Illinois News Bureau. She lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Number of pages: 576
Trim Size: 6x9
Season: WIN2000
Selling Territory: WORLD EXCL. UK & COMMONWEALTH, EUROPEAN UNION