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A searching, captivating look at the persistence of myth in our modern world

"By nature volatile and discordant, the human animal looks to silence for relief from being itself while other creatures enjoy silence as their birthright."

In a book by turns chilling and beautiful, John Gray continues the thinking that made his Straw Dogs such a cult classic.

Gray draws on an extraordinary array of memoirs, poems, fiction, and philosophy to re-imagine our place in the world. Writers as varied as Ballard, Borges, Conrad, and Freud have been mesmerized by forms of human extremity―experiences that are on the outer edge of the possible or that tip into fantasy and myth. What happens to us when we starve, when we fight, when we are imprisoned? And how do our imaginations leap into worlds way beyond our real experiences?

The Silence of Animals is consistently fascinating, filled with unforgettable images and a delight in the conundrum of human existence―an existence that we decorate with countless myths and ideas, where we twist and turn to avoid acknowledging that we too are animals, separated from the others perhaps only by our self-conceit. In the Babel we have created for ourselves, it is the silence of animals that both reproaches and bewitches us.

• Sales Rank: #866149 in Books
• Brand: Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Published on: 2013-06-04
• Released on: 2013-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.47" h x .88" w x 6.03" l, .76 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

Review

“Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism.” ―Simon Critchley, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Gray's is] a powerful message, and not without elements of profundity. And it is conveyed with eloquence of language and dignity of thought.” ―Robert W. Merry, The National Interest

“Gray's fans should find much here to please them. The range of literary, historical and philosophical extracts--from Conrad and Zweig to Borges and John Ashbery, and from Nietzsche and Freud to Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz, to name only a few--is broad and deep. Gray's own utterances are by turns characteristically dark, audacious and outrageous.” ―Caspar Henderson, The Telegraph

“Silence of Animals is a beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind. It is effectively an anthology with detailed commentary, setting out one rich and suggestive episode after another, each of which becomes only more suggestive by the juxtaposition.” ―Philip Hensher, The Spectator

About the Author

John Gray is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including The Immortalization Commission, Black Mass, and Straw Dogs. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.

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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
What to do when faith deserts us?
By Acorn
This new book by John Gray is a meditation on how we deal with the world when our faith in progress and human betterment deserts us. It explores the theme through the prisms of literature, art, philosophy, and to a lesser extent, psychology rather than being a scientific or historical study. As with all of Gray's work, it has some telling insights and observations, and ranges over a fascinating mix of the familiar and obscure to give depth and substance to his ideas.

The Silence of Animals is arranged in three parts. The first looks at the idea of progress and how people's belief in it has disintegrated when faced with human barbarity. The two world wars left ruin in their wake and Gray looks at the reactions of writers such as J G Ballard, Norman Lewis and Stefan Zweig to the rapid disappearance of civilised behaviour in the brutality of war. Barbarism can also emerge from economic crisis: the Great Depression and the inflation in inter-war Germany, and the financial crash of 2008, each destroyed the wealth of countless families. They rendered years of faith in saving and building a future utterly meaningless, even as the alchemists of finance breathed a sigh of relief over their canapés at finding their own fortunes unscathed.

Gray was previously an academic political theorist and he sees authoritarian politics, whether of the left or right, as an attempt to deny the chaos of reality and to fake a sense of order. People like certainty and the dream of a better day to come, and therein perhaps lies the appeal of those charlatans who would have us believe that they can plan and control our future.

In the end, progress is a myth because evolution is about survival, not about constant improvement. Gray characterises evolution as a process of drift rather than a rise to ever greater heights of rationality, peace and order.

In the second part of the book Gray looks at the ideas of Sigmund Freud and in particular his views on myth creation. Freud saw the internal self as forever at war between the forces of Eros (love, creativity) and Thanatos (hatred, destruction). Psychoanalysis can be seen as a process of coming to terms with this perpetual disorder. We might be driven by unconscious forces over which we have no control, but by accepting and trying to recognise them we can attain some degree of autonomy in our lives.

All our constructions of the world are myths of one kind or another. Gray rejects Jung's idea of universal myths and notes that museums are full of old gods that people once thought were eternal and immortal. Our stories about the world change all the time, as do we, and part of Freud's work was to reconcile us with our ever-emergent selves.

Science appears to be different and Gray makes a neat distinction between scientific method, which tests our beliefs against facts, and the way we usually operate which is to select the facts that reinforce our beliefs. We are an incorrigibly irrational lot. But even science is myth-like: any scientific theory only works for a certain period of time before being replaced by another or being rendered irrelevant by a new paradigm. Our understanding of the world is thus made up of changing theories and stories, often inconsistent and sometimes plain barmy, and none of them ever fully explains everything. Spending your days searching for a theory of everything? Get a life.

Given that the world is chaotic and that our stories and theories about it are patchy and ephemeral, how can we best engage with the world? This is the theme of the final section of the book. Here Gray investigates how people have sought to look at the world from different perspectives and analyses two extraordinary books by J A Baker, who tried to see the world through the eyes of animals. He also looks at how people have pursued silence and used meditation, exercises that try to take us out of the hubbub of the world and the manic chatter in our heads. The value of these activities is that they change us and our perceptions of (and enjoyment of) the world.

The world view depicted by Gray might seem to presume pessimism and often Gray's thoughts appear this way, but accepting the chaos of the world and our inability to fully grasp it can also be refreshing and liberating, and can heighten our enjoyment of ourselves, other people and the world about us. Being alive becomes interesting in itself.

There is no discussion of the French existentialist philosophers, and surprisingly no discussion of Buddhism, even though these two have a lot in common with Gray's perspective. The final section of the book felt incomplete as a result. There is also far too little about the human need for certainty in life and how this blinds us to the greater joys of the world. In the first part of the book he consigns the progress myth to the rubbish bin, but if we have to live by myths is the progress one so bad? Public policy, education systems and charitable aid are all built on the lie of progress but they have produced some positive social results. Gray never considers whether some myths might be preferable to others and how we might decide that.

There is a wealth of engrossing detail in this book, supplemented by extensive notes. His exploration of some of the lesser known byways in literature whetted my appetite to pursue them further. Even if you find Gray's views unconvincing, the journey with him is well informed and never dull. This work will inspire you to reflect on how you understand yourself and the world in which you have randomly arrived.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A masterpiece of philosophy. It demolishes the modernity's so-called certainties and moves towards an embrace of disorder.
By Umer Vakil
This collection of essays was a dense read, but it must be read more than once. I couldn't help but underlining a couple of lines - simply so I could return to them later. Their value comes from the incredible eloquence with which the dominant ideologies of Western history are critiqued. For Gray, in the end, the only solace humans can find is in contemplation - but not as a key to seek redemption from being human , but as a path towards new perspectives on a disorderly world.

What I love is his ability to unify such large bodies of thoughts, underline their underlying ideas, express them - and then highlight the conflict between these philosophies with other philosophies - or their (oft non-obvious) common assumptions.

His most important contribution to thought is the succinct take-down of one of the biggest myths of the modern world: that progress, be it material or moral, is at heads with religion. For him, progress is simply an extension of the Christian belief in history's trajectory converging to an event. Even the Socratic tradition of finding redemption in Knowledge - or in that case - Science, is also a belief in eventual salvation. This is in opposition to the ancient Egyptians or Greeks, who thought that "nothing was new under the sun". Ancient pagans did not see the world divided between "civilized" in tune with progress, and the "savage", not in tune with it - but as humanity as a single entity always at war with itself.

To Gray, Liberal Humanism happens to be myth, a strange mythological force that is denial of its own mythological status due its scorn for religion. Humanism as a philosophy takes a few claims as self-evident and bases itself on these axioms: "that a rational life is devoid of myths... that moral progress, even if incremental, is possible...that humans are inherently freedom loving", although an observation of history's embrace of countless tyrants almost immediately refutes this central axiom. Fortunately, history has no goal or direction and these assumptions can easily be shown to be defective through simple reasoning by the likes of philosophers such as Gray.

Of course, these two dominant thoughts are only the unique targets in a few essays. Freud's and Nietzsche's anti-humanism is looked at with far more sympathy - a philosophy embracing internal struggle, and not settling for ultimate salvation. Freud’s philosophy is at complete odds with the Socratic tradition: Socrates thought that logic and thought can lead to self-understanding, leading to goodness, while Freud maintained that the mind is inherently illogical - and redemption through knowledge too is mythological ideal. These aren’t abstract debates restricted to earlier decades, modern social scientists - economists, psychologists and so on feel that the science can capture the intricacies of human thought, and that this understanding itself constitutes progress. The same can be said of the Positive Psychology and New Age movements, the Romantic movement described by T.E. Hulme… all that believe that humans have an endless potential that can be utilized. Most dominant ideologies are dissected by Gray, and either partially embraced or brutally dismissed.

I have read some reviews that claim that the economic effects of progress such as environmental destruction etc. are ignored by Gray - but this is a philosophical treatise, and it doesn’t hold that those factors are not important. In fact, I’m sure he has covered these aspects in his other books.

A review of all the ideas in this book would take pages and pages - but no summary will ever do this book justice. I’ve done a rather poor job covering them, almost deliberately since summaries tend to be ineloquent and ugly.

The crust of this book and its mission of contemplation (though not maybe exactly the contemplation Gray had in mind) can be taken by Gray’s mention of J.A. Baker in his essay “Another Sunlight”. Baker tried to observe a hawk he was watching and enter its field of vision, looking at the world a new light “The hawk was Baker’s point of exit from the human world. ‘I have always longed to be a part the outward life, … Seen through a hawk’s eyes the works of humans had the look of natural things.” Gray says: “People who love other creatures are often accused of anthropomorphize them. This was not true of Baker. Rather than anthropomorphize other species, Baker tried the experiment of anthropomorphize himself. Seeing the world as he imagined hawks might see it, he was able at times to be something other than he had been. He too raced to oblivion, losing himself as he followed the peregrine.”

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful.
Gray's Anatomy of Civilizationj
By Cotton Mather
That Gray puts to bed the rationalist's love affair with humanism is less important than the fact that he euthanizes what is left of faith as well.

Ignore Thomas Nagel's NY Times book review. As much as I like Nagel's work, his review is off considerably. He claims that Gray inserts far too much secondary quotation from other books. This is not really even a matter of opinion. It is simply false. Gray uses what is necessary to convey his ideas within an intellectual's context. Nagel also claims that Gray hammers away for no reason as there are many examples of progress available. Well, Nagel just walks into the trap here as Gray explains why such examples are part of a greater myth.

Gray has carefully explained the nature of our wishful thinking and, without ideological bias or academic rancor, he has done his part for disenchantment. Yet, he has not, in any way, attempted to create a nihilist's playbook. He allows much for the advance of meaning.

Really--a marvelous book. It deserves much more attention than it seems to be getting.

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> Free PDF Aquella Ultima Noche: (The Last Night) (Spanish Edition), by India Grey

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Cristiano Maresca, piloto de Fórmula 1 de fama mundial, siempre pasaba la noche antes de una carrera en brazos de una hermosa mujer…

Cuatro años atrás, esa mujer fue Kate Edwards. La noche que pasó con Cristiano despertó sus sentidos y le hizo experimentar un placer inimaginable. Sin embargo, al día siguiente, el indomable Cristiano tuvo un accidente que estuvo a punto de costarle la vida. Poco después, Kate descubrió que estaba esperando un hijo suyo…

• Sales Rank: #7301370 in Books
• Published on: 2012-01-03
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 6.62" h x .42" w x 4.21" l,
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent away for the Mills & Boon Writers’ Guidelines. She recalls the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox and kept these guidelines for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January and beginning every list of New Year’s resolutions with the words 'Start Novel'. But she got there in the end!

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## Get Free Ebook Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, by Ralph Freedman

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Tracing the career of Rainer Maria Rilke, a definitive biography combines detailed interpretations of his life with an intimate reading of his verse and prose and shows how he grew from an ambitious versifier into a great poet.

• Sales Rank: #1733935 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.50" h x 6.25" w x 1.75" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 639 pages

Amazon.com Review
Combining empathetic insight into the poet's life with intimate understanding of the poet's work, exhaustive research with a storyteller's flair, Freedman creates portraits of the young Rilke living out the poetic imagination, an older Rilke realizing his calling as one of the century's greatest poetic visionaries,culminating in such works as the Duino Elegies and Letters to a Young Poet.

From Publishers Weekly
Freedman, emeritus professor of comparative literature at Princeton and author of a biography of Hermann Hesse, notes in this thorough and thoughtful study of Rilke that he will follow "this tortured man" as he evolves from "a versifier consumed by ambition to one of the great poets of our time." He delivers on half that promise, by bringing to life the ambitious versifier far more successfully than he does the great poet. Rilke was born into a German-speaking family in Prague in 1875 and soon developed a pattern of illness-real and imagined-that persisted for the rest of his life. Other defining traits include a fawning pursuit of aristocrats (usually female), infatuations with Russia and Italy, intense love affairs (usually preceded by letter-writing campaigns) that ended in six months and a fondness for the company of artists rather than writers. He was, briefly, Rodin's secretary in Paris, and his wife-whom he soon abandoned, along with their daughter-was also a sculptor. Other familiar figures who appear are Andre Gide, Eleanora Duse and Franz Werfel. Readers will probably find Rilke unappealing, but Freedman skillfully reveals the various myths and personas the poet created about himself and perhaps even believed, and shows how in his masterpiece, The Duino Elegies, he shaped them into a new aesthetic "vision." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Rilke's poems Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, among others, make him one of the great poets of the century. His day-to-day living, on the other hand, is quite uneventful and not particularly admirable, and Freedman (Rilke: A Biography, Random, 1988) does not enliven it. Rilke's passionate commitment to art was counterbalanced by a pathological incapacity for true intimacy that slipped into cold cruelty and a weakness for the ease and favor of aristocratic patronage, travel (with a tendency to misunderstand and sentimentalize the cultures he saw), depression, and illness. Freedman proficiently documents the movements, affairs, and preoccupations that served as raw material and provocation for Rilke's art. Yet the author gives us no real insight into Rilke's life or work. It is in the poems and other creations where the reader will meet the man. For academic libraries. [Rilke's newly published Uncollected Poems are reviewed on p. 116.-Ed.]-Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
--Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
a postcard of a church
By Paul Agostinelli
Some biographers get inside the spiritual life of their subjects and are able to capture its intimate movements in such a way that the life takes on a magical coherence and wholeness. Others, less sympathetically endowed, are content to record external circumstances and events, with perhaps some brief overtures toward explaining inner motives and passions. One would think a poet of Rilke's fierce inwardness demands primarily the former form of biography - and he does - but the latter form also offers some interesting insights, especially for readers who might be unfamiliar with the milieu he lived and worked in. This biography is very much in the latter camp. Freedman's prose suffers from frequent bouts of groaningly bad academese ("His words adumbrate the divine tension between Word and World" - yuck!), but his narrative does give the imaginative reader some purchase on the shaping forces behind many of Rilke's most powerful works. The last few hundred pages are something of a slog since you know that felicitous insights into Rilke's inner life (and there are some) will be consistently overwhelmed by a rather distant-sounding reportage of his travels, housing troubles, and publishing concerns. For a poet whose mission was to transform external vicissitude into internal truth... the effect is something like viewing a postcard of a church. Rilke was notorious for flooding his lovers with passion before withdrawing from their intimacy, and in a way Freedman, who never really seems to get under Rilke's skin (although it it is clear he would like to), takes his place among those spurned souls.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man
By A Customer
This biography sensitively and thoroughly investigates the life of Rilke. We follow not only his life's events, but his intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and poetic development, all of which are closely intertwined. Freedman himself writes the tale so well--it is a pleasure to read! The book features plenty of photographs of Rilke, his family and friends. Rilke was a complicated and troubled man, but the wonder is seeing how out of such human frailties arose a transcendent body of work.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
messy
By Malte Laurids Brigge
This is a sprawling, lazy account. It was moderately useful as a complement to Donald Prater's far more concentrated 'A ringing glass', but if I hadn't read that book first I wouldn't have formed much of a picture of Rilke's life. There are a few interesting stories found here which don't appear in the other book, but on the whole it is totally inferior.

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! Free Ebook At the Sign of the Star, by Katherine Sturtevant

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The tale of a bookseller's daughter

Meg Moore is the motherless and only child of a bookseller with a thriving business in Restoration London-and that makes her an heiress. She knows that someday she will have her pick of suitors, and that with the right husband she can continue in the book trade and be friends with wits and authors, as her father is. But Mr. Moore's unexpected marriage throws all Meg's dreams into confusion. Meg resists the overtures and edicts of her stepmother with a cleverness equaled only by her fierceness, but in spite of it all her rival's belly soon swells with what Meg fears will be her father's new heir. Meg seeks wisdom from almanacs and astrologers, plays and books of jests, guides for ladies and guides for midwives. Yet it is through her own experience that she finds a new matrimony with which to face her unknown future. This vibrant novel recreates a lively and fascinating historical period when women claimed a new and more active role in London's literary scene.

• Sales Rank: #2981965 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .65" h x 5.75" w x 8.55" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 140 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Though her mother died four years ago, the heroine of this novel set in 1677 London feels fortunate indeed: her father is a bookseller and publisher, and she is his only heir. Thanks to her anticipated dowry, she will have an unusual degree of freedom: "I would not live my life like other women, bound to dreary husbands and household duties." With her love of books and her admiration of Restoration London's great wits, the hours Meg spends working in her father's shop bring great pleasure. But all this changes when Meg's father takes a new wife: not only is Meg's inheritance jeopardized by the possible birth of a half brother, she must also study the womanly arts she scorns at the side of her stepmother, Susannah. Refreshingly, Meg's struggle to come to terms with her altered situation never degenerates into a battle of one-dimensional tomboyish virtue against uncomprehending femininity. Though readers never lose sight of Meg's predicament, Susannah is gradually and convincingly revealed to be as sympathetic and as hardheaded as her stepdaughter. Avoiding simplistic devices, resolution is achieved through perseverance and genuine emotional growth. Admirers of historical fiction will relish Sturtevant's (A Mistress Moderately Fair, for adults) detailed depiction of life in the great city, including a trip to Vauxhall, a visit to the theater (where Aphra Behn's work is performed) and the simple errands that take Meg through the smoky, noisy and beguiling streets. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-Restoration London in the year 1677 comes alive through the eyes of 12-year-old Meg Moore, the motherless only child of a bookseller whose home and place of business is, as the title conveys, "at the sign of the Star." Meg's father publishes the works of playwright John Dryden, among others, and Meg enjoys being part of the literary world. She expects to one day inherit the business and marry well with such a dowry. However, her expectations are dashed by her father's remarriage to Susannah Beckwith. Meg is cruel and insulting to her stepmother, who quickly becomes pregnant with the heir she fears will steal her future. When Susannah asks the girl to care for her baby in the event that she (like Meg's mother) dies in childbirth, Meg remembers how she had loved a younger brother who died. Though she does lose her inheritance when Tobias is born, she eventually comes to realize that, while the future may be unknown, she has many options. Sturtevant paints a lively picture of the time and place, weaving information on such diverse topics as medical procedures, food, and wedding rituals. Each chapter bears the title of an actual book written during the late 17th century. Readers also learn about Aphra Behn, a successful woman playwright of the time, who becomes a role model for Meg. Good historical fiction with a strong female heroine set in a time and place not often portrayed in books for this audience.
Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 4-8. Working in her widowed father's London bookshop in 1677, twelve-year-old Meg loves being on the fringe of the literary world and talking with her father and their customers about books. In addition, she feels secure knowing that the business she will inherit will give her the financial freedom to marry a man of her choosing. So when her father remarries, Meg finds the adjustment difficult. Not only must she now acknowledge that she will probably not inherit the bookshop, she must also accept her stepmother's tutelage in household skills and womanly decorum. Those lessons come hard to the quick-witted, rebellious child, who finds quiet, spiteful ways to needle her stepmother. Gradually, though, Meg comes to accept her new place in her old home and the inevitability of change itself. It's commonplace to find that the heroine in historical fiction is a strong-willed girl, reluctant to be bound by the conventions of a past society, but Meg seems less like a child transplanted from the late twentieth century than a product of her own times. In this novel, Sturtevant creates a vivid sense of a different culture through the vocabulary, speech patterns, and reactions of the characters, as well as the many details that make up the lively backdrop of seventeenth-century London. Readers will end the book hoping for a sequel to this engaging story, which is set in a period little visited in historical novels for young people. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
AT THE SIGN OF THE STAR
By A Customer
Meg Moore is only eight years old when her mother dies in childbirth. Her bookseller tells Meg that she is now heir to all his books, copyrights, and other interests. With such a dowry, she knows that someday she will have her pick of suitors and that with the right husband she can continue in the book trade. She dreams of being friends with witty people and authors, as her father is. She obstinately refuses to attend school, preferring to learn the booksellers' trade in her father's shop. She does not care to learn women's ways. Strong-minded, with a lively wit and caustic tongue, Meg brings London in the 1600s alive for us, through her eyes.

When her father remarries a woman named Susannah, it looks like Meg will lose her birthright and inheritance to Susannah and any child she might have. However, Meg does not want to live life as only a wife or servant, either. It seems though, that these might be the only options open to her unless she learns a trade. Meg consults Anthony Barker, an astrologer. Mr. Barker tells her that a great change is coming to her life.

Thirteen-year-old Meg must learn to take charge of her own life in an era when woman do not have much control over their lives. Meg is determined that she will become a bookseller or at least have some other trade. She refuses to be at the mercy of a husband or be forced to live as a servant.

Will an unsuspected talent be Meg's salvation, and will she find the maturity to face her unknown future? In AT THE SIGN OF THE STAR, Katherine Sturtevant has recreated the world of 17th Century Restoration London at a time when women were finally coming into their own on London's literary scene.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating novel filled with details of 17th century life
By Rebecca Herman
As the only child of a widowed bookseller in 17th century London, twelve-year-old Meg Moore stands to inheirit her father's entire estate. Because she is an heiress, Meg will be able to take part in the bookselling trade - her greatest wish - and will be able to chose her own husband. But Meg's entire future is changed when her father decides to remarry. Meg dislikes her new stepmother, Susannah, even though Susannah tries to be kind to her. She fears that Susannah will provide her father with a son that will take Meg's place as his heir, and that she will be reduced to marrying any man that will take her, or even worse, working as a maid. But over a year of change, Meg realizes that accepting Susannah can only bring good, and that there are ways that she can help influence her future, even if she is not an heiress. This was a fascinating glimpse into a time period that is not often written about in young adult fiction. Highly reccomend to teen fans of historical novels.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Live in Another Time
By Kat Corbett, author of the DanceFutures series
Women and girls today have so many more freedoms and opportunities than they once had. Find out what it was like to be a girl in Restoration London--specifically, in 1677. Meg Moore, an independent-minded girl of 12, chafes at the restrictions on her life--on how she must behave, speak, and accept the future arranged for her. If her father's new wife bears him a son, she will no longer be his heir. Upon his death, she will not be able to take over his bookselling business, which she loves, as she hopes and plans to do. She acts out her resentment of her stepmother in bold rudenesses that you will guiltily enjoy. :) By the time her worst fear becomes a reality, however, Meg has discovered a new talent that may win her an even more independent future.

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!! Ebook Free The Visible Man: Poems, by Henri Cole

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"To write what is human, not escapist," is Henri Cole's endeavor. In The Visible Man he pursues his aim by folding autobiography and memory into the thirty severe and fiercely truthful lyrics--poems presenting a constant tension between classical repose and the friction of life--that make up this exuberant book. This work, wrote Harold Bloom, "persuades me that Cole will be a central poet of his generation. The tradition of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane is beautifully extended in The Visible Man, particularly in the magnificent sequence 'Apollo.' Keats and Hart Crane are presences here, and Henri Cole invokes them with true aesthetic dignity, which is the mark of nearly every poem in The Visible Man."

• Sales Rank: #1528879 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-05
• Released on: 2005-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .19" w x 5.50" l, .23 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

From Library Journal
Cole (The Look of Things, LJ 2/1/95) has contributed much to contemporary poetry, not just as a poet but as a Harvard lecturer and as the former executive director of the Academy of American Poets. This fourth collection tarnishes that reputation. The problems begin with the title, which brings implications of revelation and epiphany. Unfortunately, the "visible man," or the visible speaker, is obfuscated by underdeveloped allusions, dense diction, and weak images. The style and form of the poems echo those of J.D. McClatchy's latest book, The Ten Commandments, compared with which Cole's efforts pale. Still influenced by the title, the reader expects the speaker to emerge vividly with some proclamation. Hints of such a declaration are strewn throughout: "I want! I want I kept hearing in my head,/ without understanding how I was governed/ by the thing Id hated. Im just like you,/ he moaned." However, these half-committed proclamations fall short each time the speaker shifts to a religious allusion. Perhaps this shift is the construct of the speaker's internal conflict; it is unclear. The 12-part poem "Apollo" alone demonstrates the brilliance of Cole's earlier books. Sadly, the volume cannot stand solely on this one poem. Not recommended.ATim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“The invention of a self so harrowing in character will remind readers of the confessions in Robert Lowell's Life Studies . . . Most other books would be reduced to ashes by the comparison.” ―William Logan, The Washington Post Book World

“* In his fourth collection, Henri Cole has submitted to the unsparing self-examination and self-generated demand for change that mark the true artist . . . The voice that breaks the poems open frees itself in a crucible of confession and absolution, through poems that incorporate history, art, religion, family, and sexuality.” ―Tina Barr, The Boston Review

From the Inside Flap
Praised by Harold Bloom and many other critics and poets for his earlier collections, Henri Cole has grown steadily in poetic stature and importance. "To write what is human, not escapist," is his endeavor. Now he pursues his aim by folding autobiography and memory into the thirty severe and fiercely truthful lyrics--poems presenting a constant tension between classical repose and the friction of life--that make up this exuberant book.
On being awarded the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Henri Cole received the following citation:
"In a poetry nervously alive to the maladies of the contemporary, yet suffused by a rare apprehension of the delights of the senses, Henri Cole has relished the world while being unafraid to satirize it. In poems that are both decorative and plain-spoken he permits his readers to share a keen and unsentimental view of the oddities, horrors, and solaces surrounding them at the end of the twentieth century."

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A brilliant, elegant new work by a major contemporary voice.
By A Customer
From a review in Publisher's Weekly (9/28/98): A dazzling combination of ceremonious poise and brash, confessional utterances, the lyrics of Cole's fourth book form an intensely personal quest to reconcile tradition with angst-ridden bodily desire. Cole sets the book's first section in a glitzy contemporary Italy where "men and boys stroll among the ruins,/ anonymously skirting the floodlights." In a sly break away from the ghosts of Merrill and Bishop (haunting this and earlier collections), foreboding is enhanced by masterful mock simplicity: "Curleyhead was bellowing Puccini/ and making the boat rock./ The sun shone like a Majolica clock./ The sea boiled noisily./ I lay down like a child in a box./ It was my birthday." Familiar Catholic rituals prompt disturbing questions. Poems like "White Spine" stage frank inner confrontations between religion and sexuality: "Liar, I thought, kneeling with the others,/ how can He love me and hate what I am?" But Cole's greatest strength is in his consistent attention to the body, both in theologizing poems like "26 Hands," "Giallo Antico" and "Adam Dying" and in classically tinged images reminiscent of his contemporaries Carl Phillips and Karl Kirchwey. The twelfth of the 14 sonnet sequence "Apollo" ends: "as in the seventh circle/ the burning rain prevents the sodomites/ from standing still/ But I am in motion, stroking toward what I cannot see, like an oar/ dipped in the blood that ravishes it,/ until blood-sprays rouse the dissolute mind,/ the ineffable tongue arouses itself." Such lines are exemplary of Cole's graven images and wrenching, impressive effects.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
"Writing What Is Human"
By Judy Lightfoot
[This book brief appeared March 11, 1999, in Seattle's "The Stranger" and can be found online at [...]
Cole does to the sonnet what postmodern consciousness does to the self--he wrenches it, shatters it, sucks it dry, turns it inside out, and sometimes, for a moment, holds it in a quiet embrace. The central problem of his book is knowledge, which made Apollo a god but divides us from ourselves. Cole seeks to unite body and mind in a self through Arte Povera poems - rough, impromptu works "in motion, / stroking toward what [he] cannot see" ('Apollo'). But the self proves to be neither a temple for the spirit nor a sturdy Greek column, and Cole becomes a tourist and connoisseur of his own disintegration -- he is marble rubble, broken stanzas, stray glimpses of porn flicks, bouts of loveless fellatio under the pier. The poet is a Visible Man in what he calls an "erotic x-ray of my soul" ('Self-Portrait as Four Styles of Pompeian Wall Painting').
Though Cole refuses to flatter us with sweetness, he can be very funny, mingling exquisitely precise imagery with comic observation. Ancient crumbling statues resemble "bodies sinking in quicksand," but "a luckless prick / is frozen in the stucco." Scholars "eat big bowls of pasta / and drain their preposterous bowels" ('The Scholars'). Many passages are marvelous - history has "white teeth / jammed with gristle" ('The Black Jacket'); forgiveness is "so hard to swallow it unshackles us" ('26 Hands'); a house is "illuminated all night, / like the unconscious, though no one enters" ('The Coastguard Station').
Cole is determined "To write what is human, not escapist." He makes himself "at home with evil, with unexamined feelings, / with just the facts" ('Apollo'), and welcomes the "Stranger, with genitalia greased," crooning, "Come, unlace my boots; I chose you" ('Etna'). Here the nervous system is, for better or worse, the organ of the mind.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Best Book of Poetry published in 1998
By A Customer
Henri Cole has long been seen as a fussy apprentice to James Merrill and Elizabeth Bishop, but this has always been an issue easily overlooked because of the vigor with which Cole has often written about his subjects. With this, his fourth book, Cole has not rejected the fastidiousness of Bishop or the sly elegance of Merrill, he has corrupted these things and, by so doing, created a harrowing, desperate, powerful poetry. In many of these poems, the complications may seem less than subtle until one realizes the focus of angst is only one of the many complications in each poem. Christianity, its pagan predecessors, modern Law, Homosexuality and its place in these constructs--all of these issues are present but secondary to the voice of speaker whose anguish to understand is the anguish of self-blame and self-deception. A brilliant and haunting book of poems.

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^ PDF Ebook Where's the Truth?: Letters and Journals, 1948-1957, by Wilhelm Reich

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Where's the Truth? is the fourth and final volume of Wilhelm Reich's autobiographical writings, drawn from his diaries, letters, and laboratory notebooks. These writings reveal the details of the outrider scientist's life―his joys and sorrows, his hopes and insecurities―and chronicle his experiments with what he called "orgone energy."

A student of Freud's and a prominent research physician in the early psychoanalytic movement, Reich immigrated to America in 1939 in flight from Nazism, and pursued research about orgone energy functions in the living organism and the atmosphere. Where's the Truth? begins in January 1948, shortly after Reich became a target of the Federal Food and Drug Administration. He had already faced persecution by the U.S. government, having been mistaken by the State Department and the FBI for both a Communist and a Nazi. Starting in 1947, Reich was hounded by the FDA, which, in 1954, obtained an injunction by default against him that enabled it to burn six tons of his published books and research journals, and to ban the use of one of his most important experimental research tools―the orgone energy accumulator. Challenging the right of a court to judge basic scientific research, Reich was imprisoned in March 1957 and died in the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, eight months later.

The text gathered here shows Reich's steadfast determination to protect his work. "Where's the truth?" he asked a lawyer, and that question animates this volume and rounds out our understanding of a unique, irrepressible modern figure.

• Sales Rank: #819330 in Books
• Brand: Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Published on: 2012-08-07
• Released on: 2012-08-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.32" h x .98" w x 6.46" l, 1.12 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

About the Author

Wilhelm Reich's many works include Character Analysis, The Function of the Orgasm, The Cancer Biopathy, Cosmic Superimposition, and earlier autobiographical writings: Passion of Youth, American Odyssey, and Beyond Psychology―all published by FSG. An early disciple of Freud's, he came to America in 1939, published The Function of the Orgasm in 1942, and died in 1957.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
WHERE'S THE TRUTH? (1948)

7 January 1948

In the beginning of one's task one is enthusiastic about helping mankind. At the end of the same task one is worn out and has lost most or all of the enthusiasm. Humanity, for whose benefit one believed to fight, has put too many dangerous obstacles in one's path. One had to risk breaking one's neck in overcoming these obstacles. Disillusionment has overcome the searcher and helper. Humanity itself through its pestilent sergeants has obstructed its own benefits. Therefore the inventor or searcher acquires that definite expression of suffering and sorrow in his face (Beethoven, Galileo, Freud), which indicates that the enthusiasm to help has been replaced by ardent adherence to truth beyond any immediate practical interests.

17 January 1948

Cancer book printed--published. It is an honest book.*

Investigation by Food and Drug still going on.

24 January 1948

No legal action against FDA possible. Advice from Hays office+

To Physician Students

26 January 1948

Dear Dr.

I have been informed that the investigators of the Food and Drug Administration are trying now to question patients whom you treat psychiatrically. It is my duty to inform you that the patients must be protected from irresponsible inquiries into their private lives. Would you be kind enough to instruct all your patients that they should restrict the investigators to matters pertaining to the accumulator and definitely refuse to answer any questions such as: "How much they pay the doctor," or "Why they went to the doctor," or "With whom they associate," "Where they were born and brought up," etc., etc. Such questions by the inspectors of the F.D.A. are illegal; they have nothing to do with the object of the investigation. Protect medical secrecy.

27 January 1948

Stop of all investigation through FDA by refusing to answer any questions at all. With the FDA the mechanistic world view tried to kill the functional attitude.

The development of materialistic philosophy proceeded from fundamental questions not of a mechanical nature but, strangely enough, of a psychological nature. What is sensation? How can matter experience itself? To what is sensation bound? It was on these questions, and not on purely material questions, that scientific minds parted company with metaphysical and mystical minds, and that every dispute flared up about the correct view of the world and the events occurring in it. Because it was clear right from the start that it is only our sensation of events and things that holds the key to the deep mysteries of understanding nature. Sensation is the sieve through which the self is in contact with the world within and outside itself. All our perceptions and our judgments about the world and ourselves depend on the nature of this sieve. The sieve is the outermost limit that delineates the living orgonotic system in the orgone ocean; through the holes in the sieve, the experiencing organism communicates with the cosmic orgone ocean.*

To Dr. Werner kemper

30 January 1948

Dear Dr. Kemper,

I have received your letter of 29 December and was very pleased to hear that the parcels have finally reached you. We sent you a fourth food parcel last week and likewise a parcel of books was sent to you via Willi Brandt* in Berlin. These books also include one called "The Cancer Biopathy" which covers the work done over the last 14 years on organic biopathies. I hope that you will embrace the discovery of orgone.+ It sounds incredible, but it is quite obvious that what psychoanalysts once called the libidinous cell energy has now actually been shown to exist in a physical and demonstrable form.

Are you in contact with Aenne Morseth (Heimburgstrasse 4, Hamburg Klein--Flottbeck)? Please keep in touch now and again, and I would be glad to be of help to you in any way that I can. We are also in contact with other people in Europe.

16 February 1948

Eva+ in distress. The following happened: She was in class with several students and a professor of heart physiology. They spoke of literature to be read. He said, "Don't read literature like that of the paranoic who believes there is a pulsation in the body and in the atmosphere."--clearly WR. She did not say anything. But felt terrible.

She did not dare to look at the Cancer Biopathy I had sent to her. She did not go to work with Cott§ as arranged. She "gave herself another two years."

23 February 1948

Refutal of the ionization theory*. Facts and experiment:

G M [Geiger Müller] tubes give G.M reaction without voltage to orgonotic excitation.

Electrons from secondary coil produce no ionization. The leaves in the charged electroscope do not come together.

The energy field between two plates, fed by the IInd coil, does not influence the electroscope.

Single-pole electroscope can be charged.

Lumination in complete vacuum 2-pole and single - pole.

I photograph the ether!!! No doubt. The more literature I read on the ether, the clearer the following become:

The requirements of the ether are important, but the description of the ether is not important.

The understanding of ether became nonsense in order to take account of certain mechanical processes, which are in themselves questionable: for example, quantum 6.5 × 10-27 erg sec.

The orgone is the true ether.

The high-ranking physicists and mathematicians have puffed themselves up unduly, They provide proof of arbitrary assumptions in a stringent way.

6 March 1948

Today, between 8 and 9 p.m. the entire world came crashing down, and a new one came into being.

Experiment: A vacuum tube produced 10,000 pulses per minute (32 scaler), with a blue glow, up to 1,000 volts without gas, without ions.

12 March 1948

The ether requires a restructuring of physics and astronomy in their entirety. This requires courage, method, loneliness, and very little publicity. And this load cannot be easily carried.

13 March 1948

The rolling snowball: Karl Menninger, incoming president of the American Psych. Society, has approvingly published Brady's* insulting article. Orgonomy+ has pulled the rug out from under his psychoanalysis.

22 March 1948

I must not allow myself to be captured by current things and forms. My work is part of the distant future.

I need helpers, but the helpers belong to the present. This is a tragedy. And only he who carries his own load can make my burden lighter.

To Armin Beregi

2 April 1948

Dear Mr. Beregi:

I have received your letter of 12 March, via Dr. Hoppe.+ Many of the questions that you raise, such as those relating to heart action currents, etc., cannot be answered at present because we still know too little about the relationship of orgone to electromagnetism. As regards your methods of approaching orgone phenomena, I must in principle repeat what I have already indicated to you: Over the course of about 16 years, packed full with experimentation and theorizing, it has become quite clear that we cannot understand orgone energy in the context of the methods and theories of classical physics, because these methods are simply not suitable and do not take us any further forward. It has already been discovered, through experiment, that we must separate the electromagnetic excitation of light from the radiation of light itself; i.e. the phenomenon of light consists of two different functions. This has been confirmed.

Similarly, it is likely that the orgone theory will make it possible to explain Planck's quanta, which so far have not been understood, rather than--vice versa--Planck's quanta providing an explanation of the functions of orgone energy. This follows clearly from the fact that orgone is primordial and is obviously the source of all known energy phenomena. It you ever succeed in establishing relationships between the action currents and orgone energy phenomena, you will have made a contribution to science the value of which cannot be overestimated. You are also certainly correct in stating that all manner of so-called miracle cures are based on body-orgone effects. Naturally, in the final analysis, such questions can be answered only by the outcome of experiments.

My Planck number is slightly higher than the one that is generally known because I was forced to extend the minute by 4 seconds.

My orgonometric numbers on astrophysics were deliberately formulated in such a way that nobody can understand them. They will be published in a way that everyone can follow, once the work has been completed.

2 April 1948

I succeeded in:

Reducing the ion theory of the GM tube to 0; orgone works in a vacuum.

Reducing the energizing voltage to 250 V at 3000 [pulses] per minute.

[Obtaining] 7-8000 pulses per minute at 350 V.

An orgone-motor is becoming a reality.

6 April 1948

I have once more ended in a heavenly waste land. This time because of the discovery of the orgone phenomena in a vacuum.

Like other people, I could enjoy children. but I need rest in order to think, and children do not allow that.

I could exert a fascination more easily than other people in gatherings.* But I had to recognize that this enthusiasm achieves nothing. They continue to defame as before.

I have discovered the ether.

This will cause me a terrible amount of trouble. Einstein stands squarely in the way with his empty space, supported by human fear of the truth. But I must put Einstein out of action as far as the ether question is concerned. By presenting the facts.

10 April 1948

Ilse+ called Dr. Wolfe of the Med. Dept. of the Atomic Energy Commission NY.

She wanted to talk to him about the GM reaction as a social problem. He promised to call back but did not do so on the same day.

We are still afraid of the great responsibility that has been visited upon us. That is why we are running to "authorities" fo...

Most helpful customer reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Inspirational.
By Richard Schulman
I have finished my first read. Having read most of Dr. Reich's books, been in his Therapy I know his discoveries have found real, moment to moment truth in my life. There will always be people who have not truly experienced his work and as such I will leave them like the FDA to there own ends. Given my great admiration for Dr. Reich and yes I loved reading Where's The Truth, I was disappointed in not finding out more details how Dr. Reich coped with his isolation. How did he cope with day to day prison life? There were many rumors of how he did cope but no refutation in this book. Dr. Reich had tremendous courage in standing up to the FDA and the Emotional Plague and I was glad to read in the excellent Introduction by Dr. Strick of Strick's outrage.
I read the journal over a period of a week, and savored each detailed year and thank the the Editors for there respect and love of Dr. Reich. The personal papers of Dr. Reich were given the attention that the great man deserved. I appreciated learning of Dr. Reich's new found love for painting, and understood how he would synthesize his visual acuity into new hypothesizes. There is lots of legal briefs and interesting love letters to Grethe Hoff (Myron Sharaf's ex wife) and an insightful view into Ilsa Ollendorffs marriage to Reich. One sees how horrendously the United States and The FDA pursued Dr. Reich and ultimately ignored what was right, motivated by the usual pharmaceutical greed, imprisoned and helped destroy the Twentieth Century most overlooked genius.

Reading the personal Letters of Dr. Reich was an honor, and a privilege.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By acting teacher
the man is a genius and everyone should read him

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! Download PDF What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology, by Ed Regis

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In 1944, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger published a groundbreaking little book called What Is Life? In fewer than one hundred pages, he argued that life was not a mysterious or inexplicable phenomenon, as many people believed, but a scientific process like any other, ultimately explainable by the laws of physics and chemistry.  Today, more than sixty years later, members of a new generation of scientists are attempting to create life from the ground up. Science has moved forward in leaps and bounds since Schrödinger's time, but our understanding of what does and does not constitute life has only grown more complex. An era that has already seen computer chip-implanted human brains, genetically engineered organisms, genetically modified foods, cloned mammals, and brain-dead humans kept "alive" by machines is one that demands fresh thinking about the concept of life. While a segment of our national debate remains stubbornly mired in moral quandaries over abortion, euthanasia, and other "right to life" issues, the science writer Ed Regis demonstrates how science can and does provide us with a detailed understanding of the nature of life. Written in a lively and accessible style, and synthesizing a wide range of contemporary research, What Is Life? is a brief and illuminating contribution to an age-old debate.

• Sales Rank: #2142362 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Released on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.46" h x .86" w x 5.69" l, .60 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As scientists come closer to creating artificial life, the very definition of life is ever more elusive. Science writer Regis (The Biology of Doom) tackles this large issue and more in a book that never quite finds its focus. By selecting the same title as Nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger's 1945 classic and Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan's 2000 offering, Regis self-consciously situates his book as a response to theirs. He is, however, no more successful than they were in answering the central question, though he proposes cell metabolism as the best definition we currently have. Regis discusses current attempts to use new techniques to create entities that could be considered living, but he fails to tell a compelling story about either the progress being made or the medical implications of these efforts. Instead, he heads off on several well-traveled tangents presenting relatively simple explanations of how we've come to our understanding of DNA, basic metabolic pathways and evolutionary biology. Although he touches on the fact that being able to distinguish animate from inanimate entities is of critical philosophical importance for debates over such issues as abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, he never does more than scratch the surface of any of these topics. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
To the question posed in the title, science writer Regis provides this answer: an embodied metabolism. The title honors the 1944 science classic by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, of wave/particle duality fame. When Schrödinger posed the question, he meant to set an agenda––DNA had not yet been identified as the genetic carrier molecule. Regis’ purpose in asking it seems motivated by the incipient creation of life from scratch, and, putting aside the ethics and biological danger of this portentous landmark in human history, seeks to furnish informed readers with a framework for deciding for themselves when scientists have crossed the finish line. Setting the tone by profiling a team running the artificial-life race, Regis presents their research program for bringing up baby, then reverts to a historical summary of the revolution in molecular biology. Covering its major discoveries, Regis devotes as much time to metabolism as to the more glamorous DNA story. Venturing that aliveness is more a philosophical than a scientific matter, Regis offers timely preparation for thought about big science headlines to come. --Gilbert Taylor

Review
“Ed Regis is always a careful researcher, always an independent thinker.  In this subversive little book, he shows that the biggest of big questions is still worth asking—more urgently now than ever.”   —David Quammen “Elegant, simple, clear, beautifully written. Regis takes up where Erwin Schrödinger left off and tackles the ultimate mystery of biology. This book is a scrumptious gem.”   —Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone “A comprehensive and elegant  analysis of the physical basis of life: an up-to-date successor to Schrodinger’s 1944 book.”  —Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, M.I.T., and author of The Emotion Machine Praise for The Biology of Doom: “[An] engaging expose ... entertaining and informative ... the best account yet of U.S. research and efforts to produce biological weapons.”   —Washington Post Book World  “Ed Regis has dug around in the roots of bioweaponry and unearthed a fascinating tale.”   —Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A popular-science writer explores basic questions
By Roy E. Perry
In 1944, Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger published a book with the same name as the current volume: "What Is Life?"

Popular science writer Ed Regis points out that Schroedinger "wanted to challenge the notion that at the core of life was some impalpable excrescence that lay beyond the grasp of science."

This optimistic view holds that life can be explained in the same terms, and by the same laws of physics and chemistry, as those that pertain to everything else in nature. To be sure, life is exceptional, but it is rule-governed and law-abiding; there is nothing inherently magical or mystical about it. Ultimately, scientists will be able to unravel all of life's mysteries.

Present-day scientists are not so sanguine. The question, "What Is life?", Regis suggests, lies more in the realm of religion, philosophy, and metaphysics--and by extension, politics and ethics--than in the realm of science.

At first glance, a tangential approach to the question, "What is life?" promises a satisfying solution: "Unquestionably, if there was anything that appeared obvious about what it meant to be alive, it was possessing the ability to die."

One's hopeful expectations of an answer, however, are dashed by this consideration: There is no agreement concerning what death is. In between life and death there is often "a state of near-death, or pseudo-life."

If one insists on a scientific answer, Regis suggests the following, "Defining life as embodied metabolism . . . seems to be the most defensible theory we have at the present."

If you expect a definitive answer to the question "What is life?", this book will disappoint you.

Ed Regis holds a Ph.D. In philosophy from New York University and taught for many years at Howard University. He is now a full-time science writer, contributing to Scientific American, Harper's Magazine, Wired, Discover, and The New York Times, among other periodicals. He is the author of several books, including The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Not much new in this short survey, but still valuable
By Wayne Lobb
I had hoped to get from this short book a probing, thoughtful, current answer to the title question, especially given the subtitle of "In the Age of Synthetic Biology". I was disappointed: this is a brief and generalized historical survey. The end footnotes and bibliographical references are valuable, though, for guided further reading.

Regis says that Schrödinger in 1943 "discreetly refrained from answering" the question. If so, then Regis has refrained as well. Here is how Schrödinger answered the question in 1943: "What is the characteristic feature of life? When is a piece of matter said to be alive? When it goes on 'doing something', moving, exchanging material with its environment, and so forth, and that for a much longer period than we would expect of an inanimate piece of matter to 'keep going' under similar circumstances." I.e., metabolism and negative entropy over long stretches of time. Here is how Regis summarizes things 65 years later: "A reasonable answer ... seems to be: an embodied metabolism." Hardly different from Schrödinger, and less illuminating. Regis defines the essential term "embodied" only through a quote in a footnote buried at the end of the book: wrapped in a membrane, like a cell is.

To my mind, Regis is wrong and unfair to dismiss Margulis and Sagan's multiple, accumulating, descriptive answers in their 1995 book of the same title as being "figurative, flowery, or metaphorical ... entirely too many answers." Here is how Margulis and Sagan answer the fundamental question: "Life itself is these [metabolic] patterns of chemical conservation in a universe tending toward heat loss and disintegration", i.e. essentially the same definition as Schrödinger. They go further than Schrödinger, asserting that the cell is the smallest unit of life on Earth and that reproduction is a crucial feature of life on Earth.

Schrödinger addressed the question of what life ultimately amounts to from the standpoint of physics and chemistry. Margulis and Sagan addressed the question of what life on this planet actually is, from its core metabolic machinery up to the fullness of all living matter that we humans perceive. Left unaddressed is the question of what life HAS to be at a very minimum, not only to be manifestly alive on Earth for a generation like an infertile mule is, but to be able to persist and evolve, perhaps synthetically, for thousands or millions or billions of years in an environment that might not resemble Earth at all. Metabolism of some type appears to be mandatory, together with the ability to adapt to a changing environment whether through reproduction with random mutation or through some other mechanism.

Lest you think that synthetic life would be have to be uninteresting, take a look at robots that evolve altruistic behavior entirely on their own, by googling the phrase "Altruistic robots produced through evolution".

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Beyond Frankenstein - Polymath07 review
By Polymath07
The recent book by Ed Regis, "What is Life? Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology", may be considered the third of a series. In 1945, Edwin Schrodinger, of the "Schrodinger Equation" that can (with strenuous labor) calculate the properties of any atom's electron cloud, and whose eponymous Cat defines the dilemma of quantum phenomena in a macroscopic world, wrote "What is life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell", in which he did not answer the title question, but explored life phenomena from a strictly chemical and physical aspect. He predicted crucial aspects of the genetic code a decade or two in advance of their discovery. Then in 1995 Lynn Margulis brought certain of the same themes more up to date in "What is Life?", shortly thereafter revised and reprinted with her son Dorian Sagan as co-author. As Ed Regis reports, Margulis and Sagan answered the question in so many ways that it is not answered at all.

Author Regis begins his book with a look at the formation of a four-way consortium in 2002, with the aim of specifically creating a living cell not based on previously living matter. To date, the effort has not succeeded, but as Edison would have said, they are learning a great number of things that don't work...and a few that offer tantalizing clues to what might work. So much so, that the government is now interested, as evidenced by the Los Alamos Protocells web site (protocells.lanl.gov) and its link to protocell.org, a jumping-off place to a handful of major efforts in the Synthetic Life arena.

Regis does home in on an answer, a minimalist definition that life is "embodied metabolism". A few caveats are needed, such as a measure of autonomy and of self-repair, for example: An automobile consumes fuel and moves about, but does not direct its own motions nor maintain itself, while a portion of the metabolism of living cells goes to structural regeneration and growth. And "embodied" is needed to distinguish living matter from open flames.

More generally speaking, living things not only metabolize, they also reproduce and evolve. Not every individual will do so, but all can do so. And, specifically for all life that we know, all life processes are directed by coded instructions. DNA carries the instructions, while RNA plus proteins carry them out. Synthetic cells could be based on DNA, RNA and proteins, or it could instead use different chemistry, perhaps not even based on carbon. But whenever a wholly synthetic "embodied metabolism" gets cranked up, performing as cells perform, I suppose we'll have to dub it "living".

This is quite a step beyond our fearsome archetype, the Frankenstein monster. That creature was supposedly produced by re-animating a sewn-together collection of bits of corpses. Certain partial successes in the synthetic life area have been analogous to this. But the goal is to create living cells from chemicals, not from various bits taken from other cells.

The rub comes if the creators of synthetic life endow it with the ability to reproduce; the ability to evolve will come along as baggage immediately. At that point, no matter what precautions they may take, SynLife (not my term: Google yields 3,770 hits) will most certainly escape into "our" environment, evolve so as to take advantage of it, and then we'll REALLY learn what it is like to live with invasive alien species! Sparrows, multiflora roses, and zebra mussels will probably pale by comparison.

I suggest that, really early on, SynLife cells be presented as a challenge to a large variety of prokaryotes, so they'll have a chance to develop resistance mechanisms and chemicals that we can later exploit when we need AntiSynBiotics!!

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