Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories

This collection begins with a series of Nightmares. Some are dreamt by the psychoanalyst, the metaphysician or the mathematician. Others are dreamt by "eminent persons" such as Joseph Stalin, Dwight D. Eisenhower or the Queen of Sheba. These Nightmares, Bertrand Russell said, might be called 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. The dreamers of these Nightmares did not adopt this technique; it is hoped that the reader will have more wisdom!"Bertrand Russell added two longer stories to complete this, his second volume of short stories. The first volume, Satan in the Suburbs, has also been published in a new edition by Spokesman.