14 Best 「aldous huxley」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
- The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
- Brave New World
- Brave New World (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
- Brave New World Revisited (P.S.) (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
- The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell
- Island
- Island (P.S.) (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
- Collected Poetry
- Point Counter Point (British Literature)
- The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West (P.S.) (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
"A genuine spiritual quest. . . . Extraordinary." — New York TimesAmong the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books—The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell—in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This edition also features an additional essay, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," now included for the first time.
Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F.—"After Ford"—in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with Island (1962), his final novel. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. What if the future was a tyranny, but one cleverly person intended to keep the mass of society unaware of this? The people would be provided with several distractions, daily life would be ruled by sex and drugs, and pervasive mass media would suppress the possibility of any original thought: in such a society the ruling elite would not need to fear any kind of rebellion. If you think that Huxley's vision seems to be the way things are in fact turning out, you're not the only one!
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit"A masterpiece. ... One of the most prophetic dystopian works." —Wall Street JournalAldous 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–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The 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 to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as 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 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites."Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune
BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED (first published in 1958) is not a reissue or revision of 0060850523 BRAVE NEW WORLD. BRAVE NEW WORLD is a novel, whereas BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED is a nonfiction exploration of the themes in BRAVE NEW WORLD. \nWhen the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future. Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy. He scrutinizes threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion, and explains why we have found it virtually impossible to avoid them. Brave New World Revisited is a trenchant plea that humankind should educate itself for freedom before it is too late.
For over a hundred years, the inhabitants of the Pacific island of Pala have been part of a social experiment whereby western science has been brought together with eastern philosophy and humanism to create a paradise on earth. In Island, Huxley gives us his vision of Utopia.
“Huxley’s final word about the human condition and the possibility of the good society. . . . Island is a welcome and in many ways unique addition to the select company of books—from Plato to now—that have presented, in imaginary terms, a coherent view of what society is not but might be.” — New York Times Book ReviewThe final novel from Aldous Huxley, Island is a provocative counterpoint to his worldwide classic Brave New World, in which a flourishing, ideal society located on a remote Pacific island attracts the envy of the outside world.In the novel Huxley considered his most important, he transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and—to his amazement—give him hope.
Aldous Huxley's Lifelong Concern With The Dichotomy Between Passion And Reason Finds Its Fullest Expression Both Thematically And Formally In His Masterpiece Point Counter Point. By Presenting A Vision Of Life In Which Diverse Aspects Of Experience Are Observed Simultaneously, Huxley Characterizes The Symptoms Of The Disease Of Modern Man In The Manner Of A Composer - Themes And Characters Are Repeated, Altered Slightly, And Played Off One Another In A Tone That Is At Once Critical And Sympathetic. First Published In 1928, Huxley's Satiric View Of Intellectual Life In The '20s Is Populated With Characters Based On Such Celebrities Of The Time As D.h. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Sir Oswald Mosley, Nancy Cunard, And John Middleton Murray, As Well As Huxley Himself. A Major Work Of The 20th Century And A Monument Of Literary Modernism, This Edition Includes An Introduction By Acclaimed Novelist Nicholas Mosley (author Of Hopeful Monsters And The Son Of Sir Oswald Mosley). Along With Brave New World (written A Few Years Later), Point Counter Point Is Huxley's Most Concentrated Attack On The Scientific Attitude And Its Effect On Modern Culture. Aldous Huxley ; Introduction By Nicholas Mosley.
An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley "The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam—Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.
Aldous Huxley's acclaimed and gripping account of one of the strangest occurrences in history In 1643 an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational and celebrated trial, the convent's charismatic priest Urban Grandier—accused of spiritually and sexually seducing the nuns in his charge—was convicted of being in league with Satan. Then he was burned at the stake for witchcraft. In this classic work by the legendary Aldous Huxley—a remarkable true story of religious and sexual obsession considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece—a compelling historical event is clarified and brought to vivid life.
When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."―Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."―Time.
Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form. He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens—a pathbreaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance—bringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through undazzled eyes.
Contemporary intellectuals still struggle over the relationship of ends to means, especially in political discourse. Pacifism is still an important topic today, as terrorism and dictatorial states abound. Many will find solace in Ends and Means, while others will find the book only a case study of the relationship of ethics to politics. Aldous Huxley examines common issues in a unique fashion. How can the regression in charity through which we are living, and for which each one of us is in some measure responsible, be halted and reversed? How can existing society be transformed into the ideal society described by the prophets? How can the average sensual man and the exceptional (and more dangerous) ambitious man be transformed into a non-attached being, one who can create a society significantly better than our own? Huxley discusses the relationship between the theories and the practices of reformers and the nature of the universe. He argues that our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality help us formulate conceptions of right and wrong, not only in our private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. Far from being irrelevant, our philosophical beliefs are the final determining factor in our actions. This provocative classic volume, now available in paperback, will continue to stimulate discussion and thought.