In the future, accelerating technology and unexpected, revolutionary events—most of which will never be predicted by...
An exuberant account of how biotechnology will vastly enhance not only our health, but our physical and mental abilities as well.
This process, writes Bess (History/Vanderbilt Univ.; Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II, 2006, etc.), is already underway, with drugs, bioelectronics, and genetics all playing leading roles. Familiar names like Prozac, Viagra, and Adderall reveal that the progress of drugs has already come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Thought-controlled prostheses and bioelectronic implants for the deaf and blind remain rudimentary, but in the coming years, we should expect to see impressive advances. Although several decades away, the idea of altering the DNA germline to produce a “designer baby” makes most people uncomfortable, but major improvements will happen through epigenetics, through which we can influence gene expression without changing DNA. All these cheerful prognostications occur in the first 70 pages. In the remaining, more thoughtful, text, Bess discusses their implications. Will society consist of “Brave New World” castes of haves (who can afford their enhancements) and deprived have-nots? How many changes can Homo sapiens undergo and remain the same species? What does it mean to lead a good life? All the advancements, writes the author, “can also lead us to gradually lose our bearings on reality itself. The more enthusiastically we give ourselves over to artifice, the more likely we are to drift insensibly out of touch with the planet that sustains us, the body we were born with, and the core relationships of family and community that frame our existence.”
In the future, accelerating technology and unexpected, revolutionary events—most of which will never be predicted by futurists—may produce a society as alien as some of our tools. Bess delivers an insightful philosophical analysis of how we must adjust.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5217-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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