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We've always looked toward the future, trying to imagine what it would be like. In 2001 we envisioned Pan Am flying to a large space station, which had phone booths. Sometimes those future visions were even more laughable: how about using nuclear missiles to deliver the ultimate payload, air mail? Future housewives would clean the house -- by spraying down the furniture with a hose. And of course we have to have flying cars. It's a fun trip down memory lane ...with a twist. From This is True for 15 April 2007 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Mitch Albom List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $13.57 Editorial Review: Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs. Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its flaws, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to It's A Wonderful Life. --Patrick O'KelleyPart melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs. Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its flaws, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to It's A Wonderful Life. --Patrick O'Kelley  By: Carl Sagan List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17 Editorial Review: "FASCINATING . . . MEMORABLE . . . REVEALING . . . PERHAPS THE BEST OF CARL SAGAN'S BOOKS." --The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier--space. In Pale Blue Dot Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. "TAKES READERS FAR BEYOND Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity's future in the stars." --Chicago Tribune  By: Timothy Zahn List Price: $6.99 Amazon Price: $6.99 Editorial Review: Timothy Zahn finishes the two-part Hand of Thrawn series with Vision of the Future. In the first book, Specter of the Past, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo battled the minions of the evil Grand Admiral Thrawn, long presumed dead. In the sequel, our heroes must prevent civil war and ensure that Thrawn's plans for a triumphant Empire are thwarted. Intergalactic intrigue, space battles, and heart-pounding action will thrill Star Wars fans in this eagerly awaited novel. Zahn is one of the most popular interpreters of the Star Wars universe with good reason.Grand Admiral Thrawn, long believed dead, has returned. Civil war is imminent in the New Republic. And what--or who--is the Hand of Thrawn? Vision of the Future is the conclusion of the two-part Hand of Thrawn series, written by Timothy Zahn, Hugo Award-winning author of the original trilogy based on the Star Wars films. The book is read by Tony Award-nominee Anthony Heald, who uses his theatrical talents to perform everything from love scenes to fight scenes as the story unfolds. His range of voices--from the "distinctive, somewhat prissy" voice of C-3PO to the gruff cynicism of Han Solo--is complemented by selections from John Williams's score and sound effects from the Star Wars films. (Running time: 3 hours, 2 cassettes) --C.B. DelaneyHugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn brings his epic two-volume series The Hand of Thrawn to an explosive conclusion with a discovery that rocks the New Republic to its foundations--and threatens to resurrect the Empire. The Empire's master plan is under way. The New Republic is on the verge of civil war and the rumor that the legendary Admiral Thrawn has returned from the dead is rallying the Imperial forces. Now Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and their allies face the challenge of their lives. They must infiltrate a hidden fortress filled with Imperial fanatics, rendezvous with a double-dealing Imperial commander, and journey into enemy territory to learn the identity of those responsible for an act of unthinkable genocide. But most important of all is the truth about Thrawn. In his hands--alive or dead--rests the fate of the New Republic. © 1998 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM All rights reserved. Used under authorization.  By: Michio Kaku List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17 Editorial Review: Take it easy: that's Michio Kaku's motto. Given the extraordinary advances science has thrown up in time for the millennium, the only way you could possibly fit them into a single volume is by a correspondingly massive simplification. Subtitled How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, Visions assumes that, by and large, scientists get to do whatever they like, that all technologies are consumer technologies, and that consumers welcome anything and everything science throws at them. Kaku gets away with this frankly dodgy strategy by dint of sheer hard work. He has based his predictions on interviews with more than 150 renowned working scientists; he integrates these interviews with a huge body of original journalistic material; and, above all, he roots that mass of information on an entirely reasonable model of what the purpose of science will be in the third millennium. Up until now, science has expended its efforts on decoding most of the fundamental natural processes--"the dance," as Kaku puts it, of elementary particles deep inside stars and the rhythms of DNA molecules coiling and uncoiling within our bodies. Science's task now, Kaku believes, is to cross-pollinate advances thrown up by the study of matter, biology, and mind--modern science's three main theaters of endeavor. "We are now making the transition from amateur chess players to grand masters," he writes, "from observers to choreographers of nature." Then again, he also believes that "the Internet ... will eventually become a 'Magic Mirror' that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race." Kaku, in short, deserves a good slapping--but he also deserves to be read. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk In Visions, physicist and author Michio Kaku examines the great scientific revolutions that have dramatically reshaped the twentieth century--the quantum mechanics, biogenetics, and artificial intelligence--and shows how they will change and alter science and the way we live.  List Price: $24.99 Amazon Price: $13.27 Editorial Review: The world is an uncertain place, which is why the future and the unknown absolutely fascinate us. Veteran television journalist Mike Wallace asked the question "What will life be like 50 years from now?" to sixty of the world's greatest minds. Their responses offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural, scientific, political, and spiritual moods of the times. Edited and with an introduction by Mike Wallace, this book provides an imaginative and thought-provoking look into our collective soul and the critical issues that underlie our hopes, prayers, fears, and dreams for life in the 21st century. Contributors include former presidents, leading scientists, noted writers and artists, respected religious leaders, and current political figures, including: Vint Cerf, Vice President of Google; known as a "Father of the Internet"Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., a geneticist who led the Human Genome ProjectDr. Wanda Jones, Director of the Office on Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesRay Kurzweil, an inventor whose developments include the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first text-to-speech synthesizerGeneral James E. Cartwright, Commander of United States Strategic CommandKim Dae-jung, the former President of the Republic of KoreaRonald Noble, Secretary General of InterpolNorman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner; called "the father of the Green Revolution"Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director UNICEF, first former volunteer to serve as director of Peace Corp, and current president and CEO of World LearningGerardus 't Hooft, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands; Nobel Prize in Physics Craig Newmark, Internet pioneer and founder of craigslist |
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