In 1986, the human race was wiped out, except for a dozen people who escaped from Ecuador to the Galapagos island of Santa Rosalia. From those dozen ill-matched survivors, after a million years, the human race was reborn as something close to fish.
The end of the human race in 1986 was the direct result of our brains being too big. Page after page throughout this very funny story, we learn that our oversized brains lie, are prone to self-deception, to self-regard and all sorts of self-destructive behaviors.
The Virgil in this tour through the self-created Hell of modern life is a Vietnam War veteran who is the child of a terrible science fiction writer who has one fan in the entire world. And that fan, a Swedish doctor in Thailand, treats the Vietnam War veteran for syphilis--and sends him to Sweden to be cured. He lives there until he is decapitated in a boatyard and becomes the ethereal guide of the book.
To quote my last Vonnegut book, "If This Isn't Nice, What Is?"
You could run out and buy or download the book.
I got my copy of the book from a barista named Joe who works at The Coffee Bar in Avenel, NJ.
Thanks Joe! It was as good as you said it was.
First 24 books of 2022:
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss.
Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins
Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
First Principles by Thomas Ricks
Political Tribes by Amy Chua
Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson
1776 by David McCullough
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
