Brave New World Revisited [Mass Market Paperback]

Aldous Huxley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1960

Re-examination of the ideas put forth in the original book as applied to society at the time of writing (1958)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 116 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1960)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000BAV7RY
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is the author of the classic novels Island, Eyeless in Gaza, and The Genius and the Goddess, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as The Devils of Loudun, The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid, January 13, 2001

By 

"netchild" (Lubbock, TX. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brave New World Revisited (Paperback)

That is the message which Huxley conveys through this follow-up to his masterpiece, Brave New World. Huxley's obsevations of modern day mind control methods, brainwashing, and propaganda are chilling. What is even more chilling is that this book was written in 1958, one can imagine what advances in these dark sciences man has taken since then. A key point in this book is that if a totalitarian state is going to exist in the present day it will almost surely be more like Huxley's Brave New World, rather than Orwell's 1984. The main reason for this is that whereas Orwell's society revolves around the threat of violence, torture, and death, Huxley's revolves around the reward system. Huxley's Brave New World lulls the masses to sleep so that they have no idea that their freedom is being taken away. Huxley predicts that we will drug people who are even slightly out of the norm for "mental illnesses" (does Prozac ring a bell?). He predicts that valuable information, information necessary for the preservation of freedom, will be subtly, very subtly, taken away from the masses while replacing it with a seemingly terrific reward (does television ring a bell?). Huxley's most frightening premise in this book is that the individual (what he and others identify as "The Great Man") is being done away with by modern "science". He recapitulates for us the great debate between the behaviorist psychologists (like Watson and Skinner) and the philosopher psychologist William James. Skinner and company believe that the individual is powerless over his environmental influences while James strongly believes in the idea of "The Great Man". (In other words did Elizabethan England create Shakespeare's plays or did Shakespeare create his plays?) Huxley tells us the bad news in bulk before getting to the obvious question What can we do? His answer can be summarized in one word, THINK!!! Think, debate, don't accept the packaged and marketed ideas that are given to you like a McDonalds cheeseburger. In Huxley's words, educated yourself for freedom. And you can start by reading a copy of this book. If your local bookstore doesn't have one, then for God's sake, for all of our sakes, find a copy quick.

67 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The world is ripe to take Mr. Huxley more seriously, October 24, 1999

By 

Walter V. Cicha "Cichacech" (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brave New World Revisited (Paperback)

Mr. Huxley started warning us in 1932, with his masterpiece, "Brave New World." In this essay-style analysis of his own book, written twenty-six years later, he takes it one big step further. Addressing everything from overpopulation to overorganization, his words ring more true with every passing year. Our society needs to lift its head from the computer screen for a few hours to read this critical work. Few, if any, have said so much in so little space. Mr. Huxley is one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, and it is a criminal shame that his words are not more widely read. We should put down our endless self-help manuals and learn where our ills really begin. We need to understand how the roots serve the tree before we can improve upon the tree. Mr. Huxley is an expert gardener...

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beware the Enemies of INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM!!, July 29, 2005

By 

Stephen Pletko "Uncle Stevie" (London, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Brave New World Revisited (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

+++++

This non-fiction book of essays, by author Aldous Huxley (1894 to 1963), examines the predictions he made in his fascinating science fiction novel written over a quarter of a century from the time he wrote this book. Huxley explains:

"When [my science fiction novel] `Brave New World' [1932] was being written, I was convinced that there was plenty of time. The completely organized society, the...caste [or class] system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by...sleep-teaching--these [threats to individual freedom] were coming all right, but not in my time...I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing [my science fiction novel]. The prophecies made in [my science fiction novel] are coming true much sooner than I thought they would...Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare...impersonal forces which are now making the world so extremely unsafe for democracy [and] individual freedom."

This is what this book does. It looks in depth at the above threats or forces to or "enemies of" individual freedom and others mentioned in Huxley's science fiction novel and applies them to the modern world. The author examines in depth the following six threats or forces:

(1) overpopulation
(2) over-organization (or bureaucracy)
(3) propaganda (in a democratic society and under a dictatorship)
(4) brainwashing
(5) persuasion (chemical and subconscious or subliminal)
(6) hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching)

His analysis made over a quarter century ago (from the year of this review) is amazingly accurate. I'll give one perfect example:

"Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual, and material progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason, and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure...Man [and woman are] not made to be an automaton, and if he [or she] becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed...People are related to one another, not as total personalities but as embodiments of economic functions or, when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment."

The above example is the kind of insight you'll find throughout this well-written book. There are a few (very few!) times Huxley seems to be wrong, but the majority of time he is spot-on.

In the last chapter of his book, Huxley attempts amongst other things to answer the following question:

"How can we control the vast impersonal forces that now menace our hard-one freedoms?" He does a good job coming to grips with this difficult question.

Do you have to read Huxley's previous science fiction novel to understand this book? NO. When he refers to his science fiction novel in this book he does not make any assumptions that the reader has read his science fiction novel. However, as a person who has read his previous novel, I can say that this book had more impact on me than if I had not read the previous novel.

Finally, the only problem I had with this non-fiction book is that it has no references and footnotes (or notes). Huxley to be sure uses information and statistics from other sources but no credit is given to them. Huxley, in his main narrative, does sometimes give informal credit to his sources but many times, he does not even do this. All information sources should have been properly referenced.

In conclusion, this is an insightful, prophetic, fascinating book that makes the case that our society may be heading in the wrong direction due to forces attempting to take away our individual freedoms!

(first published 1958; forward by author; 12 chapters; main narrative 185 pages)

+++++