Brave New World - by Aldous Huxley (Hardcover)

About the Book

"First Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published 2006"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class. This powerful work of speculative fiction sheds a blazing critical light on the present and is considered to be Huxley's most enduring masterpiece.

Following Brave New World is the nonfiction work Brave New World Revisited, first published in 1958. It is a fascinating work in which Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with the prophetic fantasy envisioned in Brave New World, including threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion.

From the Back Cover

Now more than ever, "one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the twentieth century" (Wall Street Journal) must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit in the face of our brave new world.

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order whose motto is "Community, Identity, Stability"--all at the cost of our freedom, humanity, and perhaps our souls.

"A genius who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning as we head into tomorrow and a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a twenty-first-century world dominated by mass entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

Review Quotes

"[A] masterpiece. ... One of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century."--Wall Street Journal