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The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death
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Author
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John Gray.
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Publisher
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FSG
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Format
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hardcover
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Product Dimensions
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7.75
x
5.25
x
1
inches
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ISBN
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9780374175061
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Pages/Publication Date
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273/2011
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Daedalus Item Code
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30662
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List Price:
$24.00
Sale Price:
$6.98
You Save:
$17.02
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Description
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Religion, for most of history, has provided an explanation for human life and a vision of what comes after it. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such beliefs came under relentless pressure as new ideas—from psychiatry and evolution to communism—seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands: humans could cease to be animals, defeat death, and become immortal. The author of Black Mass, Straw Dogs, and Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern, political philosopher and critic John Gray takes a brilliant and frightening look at humankind's striving toward a scientific version of immortality. Probing the parallel faiths of Bolshevik "God-builders," who sought to reshape the planet, and psychical researchers, who believed they had evidence of a nonreligious form of life after death, Gray raises questions about how such beliefs threaten the very nature of what it means to be human. "The British philosopher and freewheeling intellectual John Gray is in serious danger of making philosophy exciting and fun to read.... Gray captures the hilarious audacity and absurdity of the search for immortality, one that could be conceived only by such charmingly quixotic creatures as human beings.... A fascinating piece of intellectual history."—NYTimes
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