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Brave New World | 
| Author: Aldous Huxley
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Category: EBooks
List Price: $5.99
Buy New: $4.79
You Save: $1.20 (20%)
Rating:  729 reviews
Sales Rank: 640
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 286
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
ASIN: B000FA5R5S
Publication Date: June 9, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.
Product Description
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has the modern age firmly in its sights. With devastating irony and fascinating precision, the novel, published in 1932, describes a futuristic world some six centuries hence in which mankind has been re-engineered for maximum efficiency, and contained and controlled by the constant satisfaction of pleasure. It is a less violent vision than that of Huxley's friend and former student George Orwell, in 1984, but it is possibly even more disturbing.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 724 more reviews...
 Open the book and open your eyes (please comment) November 16, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Brave New World takes place in a utopian London around the year 2540, which started with a good idea, but went way wrong. Humans are produced in large numbers in a high-tech factory without the filth of viviparous reproduction. The babies produced are organized into five castes and are conditioned specifically to do their part in maintaining their society. As the reader progresses farther into the story, they find out what is sacrificed for the stability of the utopian world they occupy, when the reader explores this world through the mind of a man named John, who has not been conditioned to accept this world that suppresses the emotions we value so much today. John comes from a "savage" reservation in New Mexico; where the humans remain that practice our modern day culture. With advances in science allover the world making our lifestyle obsolete, the "savage" lifestyle is repulsive in the eyes of the rest of the brave new world. See how our blind ignorance can lead to catastrophe.
Although an attempt to sum up the novel in only a small amount of words would be in vain, I can offer that this book is a must read for anyone who is capable of thinking beyond ideas provided by way of the text.
This was SUCH a great book. The story Brave New World entertained me more than any other book I have ever read before. It not only was an incredible plot, with amazing creativity, and imagination, but also has shocking conversation that challenge values accepted in our society today, and challenges the minds of all intellectuals willing to relate to the characters, and attempt to draw parallels between Huxley's story, and the story our culture continues to write, as we advance to where Huxley's world began.
To me, a book is worth no more than the thoughts it provokes once I have set it down. By this standard, I am still not done calculating its genius, because I have not yet finished thinking, or talking about themes from the book.
This book is more enjoyable with some soma! November 14, 2008
PROS: A fascinating view of the future. The predictions are sometimes chillingly accurate. For example, soma, the drug of choice in the novel, is present today in the plethora of feel-good drugs (Prozac, Viagra, etc.) "A gram is better than a damn," the futurists instruct. Similarly, the "feelies" are 4D movies (touch included) and are even more engrossing and numbing than today's TV. Just you wait. We're headed there.
CONS: The novel's pacing is a bit slow at times.
CONCLUSION: This century genetic engineering will finally make it mark on the planet. Read this book to get a feel of what could happen. I recommend it!
Frighteningly Prophetic October 13, 2008
Brave New World / 0-06-092987-1
While "Brave New World" may lack the narrative punch of other dystopias such as "1984", I cannot help but feel that for sheer prophetic rightness, Huxley hits the nail on the head where others fail. Where Orwell sees an oppressive government that frightens and tortures its populace into submission, Huxley envisions a world where government control is total and yet unnoticed, simply because the population does not care.
Why care about your government when there is so much more fun stuff to be doing? There's soma - a happy-pill that counters all sadness, doubt, and anxiety - to take, romances to conduct, entertainment to consume, and so many other more interesting things to think about. And don't we see that today, in the news media (I second the reviewer who mentioned Postman's wonderful "Amusing Ourselves to Death"), with reports that are more focused on entertainment than on the dissemination of information.
Huxley's insightful book is an individual wake-up call to us all - a reminder never to become so complacent that we simply stop caring about the greater world around us.
Dystopia, i long for thee August 23, 2008
I purchased Brave New World after reading 1984, and while I must confess that I enjoyed Orwell's book just a little bit more, Huxley's work was still an immediately compelling read. I think what I liked best was just how "british" this future was, by which I mean, everything seemed so very posh and hip and how we Americans would tend to see the British, as opposed to (sorry to keep drawing comparisons) 1984, whose depictions of England were much more how they might be viewed by say, South Africa.
Another thing I liked about the story was that I didn't particularly care for any of the characters that much. I actually enjoyed the disappointment of having each character let me down just when I thought their basic goodness would shine through. Initial protagonist Bernard Marx is far from the jaded idealist that one wants to believe he is, instead vying for vapid acceptance in the shallow society that he is ostracized from; Lenina Crowne does not become enlightened to Marx or the Savage's ways of living and remains blissfully baffled by each of them, and wistfully goes on enjoying the meaningless sex and soma holidays; even John the Savage becomes unrelatable, turning into something of a zealous monk who becomes so averse to any feelings of personal satisfaction that he... well, read the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed Brave New World and will in all likelihood pick up Brave New World Revisited in the near future.
Good Book August 8, 2008
An excellent book with an excellent plot and perfect examples of external and internal conflicts among the characters and the society in which the characters live in.
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