This book was a surprise, and not least because I picked it up initially because of the endorsement by Barack Obama on the cover. While I’ve never read any of Mr Obama’s own books, I am inspired generally by his thinking and I tend towards empathy about the challenge of turning his thoughts into action given the current state of American politics.
So when Mr Obama says something is worth reading, I decided to listen and boy was this faith borne out.
This book chimed with me because of the essential love of the knowledge in books and the deep belief, obvious from page one to the very end of the book, that books contain all that’s needed to build a better society and world. The backdrop of the threat of nuclear devastation, so typical of the generation and for very good reason, coupled with a prescient view of the invention of killer drones that inhabit our current society (although admittedly those drones are typically used to date in vast, desert countries rather than in modern metropolis’)
The book raced along at a pace that was enjoyable but gave me pause for thought and consideration, not an easy balance to achieve! I was left with much to ponder and have chosen, as my next literary step, to read Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness as it is also born from the perspective that ignorance and bigotry lie at the heart of human suffering.
In his book, Ray has given these central themes a life of their own, and a pace of action that is hard to ignore. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is curious to explore a world without books, a world where people do not read; a world that is startlingly, and dangerously, easy to achieve today.
So when Mr Obama says something is worth reading, I decided to listen and boy was this faith borne out.
This book chimed with me because of the essential love of the knowledge in books and the deep belief, obvious from page one to the very end of the book, that books contain all that’s needed to build a better society and world. The backdrop of the threat of nuclear devastation, so typical of the generation and for very good reason, coupled with a prescient view of the invention of killer drones that inhabit our current society (although admittedly those drones are typically used to date in vast, desert countries rather than in modern metropolis’)
The book raced along at a pace that was enjoyable but gave me pause for thought and consideration, not an easy balance to achieve! I was left with much to ponder and have chosen, as my next literary step, to read Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness as it is also born from the perspective that ignorance and bigotry lie at the heart of human suffering.
In his book, Ray has given these central themes a life of their own, and a pace of action that is hard to ignore. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is curious to explore a world without books, a world where people do not read; a world that is startlingly, and dangerously, easy to achieve today.
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