A fascinating, and delightfully unpretentious, attempt to tackle the biggest question.
A scientifically grounded search for meaning in a universe that continually reveals itself as ever more complex and capacious.
The more we learn about our dizzyingly expansive universe, first-time author Brown contends, the more humankind is confronted by existential crisis. The “astonishing mosaic of matter and energy that we are just beginning to understand” can create a sense of personal diminishment—how does puny human existence fit within such a cosmology? Brown argues that the universe can be understood, maybe somewhat anthropomorphically, as an exploration for new means of survival, as a preservation instinct writ large. To substantiate this claim, he furnishes a sweeping consideration of the structures that make up the universe, from its constituent parts to our solar system to Earth. If nothing else, this breezily written volume is worth reading for its accessible introduction to cosmology. Brown lucidly discusses competing interpretations of the universe’s origins and subsequent development. People can find purpose and meaning by participating in the maintenance and improvement of the universe’s sustainability, a collective project that not only brings us closer to understanding the totality of life and the cosmos, but to each other: “The path of developing harmony as a necessary prelude to creating meaning for our existence requires us to act uniformly as a species to eliminate the vast inequities in power, wealth and opportunity that are now so prevalent among us.” This is an extraordinarily ambitious investigation that includes consideration of a vast array of subjects, including overpopulation, the nature of violence, and Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing on the National Security Agency. Sometimes the author strays too far afield, seemingly afraid to leave a potentially pertinent topic unmentioned. Brown avoids any dogmatic attachment, however, often insisting that certainty about such difficult matters isn’t possible. This is a worthy attempt to combine the best of what science can offer with an unremitting insistence on the human significance of science’s findings. It’s also a very practical one since, Brown believes, the meaning of our existence seems to demand a heightened level of ecological responsibility.
A fascinating, and delightfully unpretentious, attempt to tackle the biggest question.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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