Nightmares of Eminent Persons
And Other Stories
By Bertrand Russell; illustrated by Charles W. Stewart
December 2000; Reprint of the 1954 edition
Spokesman
ISBN: 0-85124-629-X
150 Pages
$22.50 paper original
Russell wrote this second collection of stories in the 1950s, in the years of the nuclear era, when he was eighty-one years old. They begin with a series of nightmares. Some are dreamt by the psychoanalyst, the metaphysicians, or the mathematician. Others are dreamt by eminent persons, such as Stalin, Eisenhower, or the Queen of Sheba. These nightmares, Russell said, might be signposts to sanity, since "the man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others."
