Where did it come from, this ideology of diversity? Peter Wood notes the oddity of the fact that such a powerful idea, energetically propagated across the whole of society for a quarter of a century, has no founding to refer to, was inspired by no charismatic teacher, was carried forward with no mighty struggles or cruel reverses, has roots in no significant philosophy. "It arrived unparented,' says Wood, 'as a kind of collective emanation of ponderous academic silliness." We just woke up one morning and there it was, demanding that we 'celebrate' it. In its impact on the individual psyche, diversity is indeed an ideology in the sense Wood describes; yet it is a shallow and trivial one -- essentially a folk superstition, a pop-culture fad like the Hula Hoop or body piercing, with no intellectual moorings at all. One of the author's key insights, in fact, is the lightness and essential frivolity of diversity, especially by contrast with actual diversity.