Reviews and Comments

This book is about man's curiosity towards the stars and how this curiosity has spurred our scientific research. He explains, in very understandable terms, human history and its history in the Galaxy with an unbreidled enthousiasm that is really pulls in the reader. Mister Sagan takes us on an epic voyage through all of space and time, where he teaches us about our solar system and its creation, about the evolution of mankind and its future, and he explores the most strange and fascinating places in the universe, and how we as a species have unravelled these mysteries, and how we keep unravelling the myriads of mysteries that lay before us.

I found this book to be a marvellous prediction of how our future will look like. The eugenics, indoctrination and the handing out of calming psycho-actives has merely begun in this age, so when we look a couple generations further into the abyss of the future, we might suspect mr. Huxley was right on the money. What I liked most in this read was the second part of the book, "Brave New World Revisited", where the author, after many years, reflects back on his predictions, at times explaining them while at other times updating his views.

This is an excellent little book on the illusion of free will. [a:Sam Harris|16593|Sam Harris|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1274184541p2/16593.jpg] delivers excellent reasoning, especially with his neuroscientific background, so his authority on this topic is almost immediately apparent.

Lucretius lends us an eye into the scientific knowledge and reasoning of the Romans, or at least one of them as I believe his views were rather radical at that time. I was surprised to find a mention of survival of the fittest, and his deductions about space, weather and the building blocks in nature are quite spot on. This book made it even more amazing how over a 1000 years of the ruling catholic religion has wiped out most of this knowledge, only to be rediscovered in the renaissance.

The only downside to this book, which is not really a downside, was that I assumed this would also touch upon the teachings of Epicurus as Lucretius was one of his most well-known Roman followers. Aside from a few mentions, and the epicurean spirit throughout the verses, little true epicurean wisdom was found.

A very interesting essay on the duties of ordinary men in times of a failing government. Henry Thoreau makes a lot of interesting arguments, most of which I can agree with. I will re-read this lots of times to come!

[b:Essential Epicurus|195762|Essential Epicurus|Epicurus|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1331474168s/195762.jpg|189330] is a compilation of the leftover texts of the great Greek philosopher Epicurus. I had already taken a liking to Epicurus' teachings before I started reading this book, so I might be quite biased, but I still did find a whole lot of relevant knowledge in this book. Although written in the 3rd century B.C., one seeking happiness will, still in this modern age, surely be aided by the wisdom of this book.

This is story about the coming of age of Holden Caulfield, a boy who doesn't seem to find his own place in the world. Holden, who is the main character, has been expelled from school and during these 190-odd pages, he's looking at his options before returning home on wednesday and face his parents.

It's a very well written book, penned down in fairly simple english so it was a rather quick read. I did enjoy it, as each chapter is a little story on its own. He's always meeting some new people or renews his views on old friends, but the author always keeps it interesting. I had expected a bit more from the plot itself, as this book is one of the American classics, but nevertheless I enjoyed it!

Oh my. This book left me breathless. So loosely written, easily readable, yet the descriptions are always spot on and guide the reader seamlessly through world-rocking events. I was already a big fan of mr. Vonnegut's work, but this book I surely regard to be his masterpiece. The Bokonon wisdom gave it a really nice touch, as its texts are so similar to the knows religions of the world, yet bokononism always emphasizes what "foma", what utter lies, all religious texts preach.

[a:Alain de Botton|13199|Alain de Botton|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1189753902p2/13199.jpg] shines his light on a behavior that has become critical in our modern age: status anxiety. His explanation of and solutions to this erratic behavior are very well put yet easy to understand, the quotations are always on point, and I liked the little history stories that came along. The book even gave me a more positive outlook on (Christian) religion, although it is far from religious propaganda.