Forty brilliantly engaging tales of what the afterlife might be like. The first 'surprise' bestseller of the Twitter generation.
David Eagleman, PHD, is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas where his research laboratory is developing a reputation for doing some of the most unusual experiments in contemporary neuroscience. He has had essays published in all manner of journals including Nature and Science. He also lectures widely and continues to be invited to speak at universities all around the world.
* An absolute pearl of a book -- Stephen Fry * Elegant, surreal and philosophically questioning, each story from neuroscientist Eagleman offers an inventive, thought-provoking blend of science and romance Metro * Sum is terrific. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completly original. -- Philip Pullman * This stunningly original book is little more than 100 pages long. You can get through it in an hour, but you'd be mad to hurry, and you will certainly want to return to it many times ... Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius. It seems exquisitely adapted to fill the contemporary longing for a kind of secular holy book. -- Geoff Dyer Observer * Anything that tells us, convincingly, that this really may be the best of all possible worlds has something big going for it Guardian * I suppose there could be people who dislike Canongate's latest find ... those, dare one say it, without poetry in their souls. For the rest - the millions who even in a post-religious, secular society find themselves at unexpected moments wondering who or what God is, if he's not a little old man sitting on a cloud. -- Mary Crockett Scotsman * Never short of new ideas, all of them rolled out with style Independent * Witty, bright, sharp and unexpected - as surprising a book as I've read for years. Every story is a new Heaven -- Brian Eno * Wacky and whimsical; a little goes a long way. -- Sue Arnold The Guardian
* An absolute pearl of a book -- Stephen Fry * Elegant, surreal and philosophically questioning, each story from neuroscientist Eagleman offers an inventive, thought-provoking blend of science and romance Metro * Sum is terrific. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completly original. -- Philip Pullman * This stunningly original book is little more than 100 pages long. You can get through it in an hour, but you'd be mad to hurry, and you will certainly want to return to it many times ... Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius. It seems exquisitely adapted to fill the contemporary longing for a kind of secular holy book. -- Geoff Dyer Observer * Anything that tells us, convincingly, that this really may be the best of all possible worlds has something big going for it Guardian * I suppose there could be people who dislike Canongate's latest find ... those, dare one say it, without poetry in their souls. For the rest - the millions who even in a post-religious, secular society find themselves at unexpected moments wondering who or what God is, if he's not a little old man sitting on a cloud. -- Mary Crockett Scotsman * Never short of new ideas, all of them rolled out with style Independent * Witty, bright, sharp and unexpected - as surprising a book as I've read for years. Every story is a new Heaven -- Brian Eno * Wacky and whimsical; a little goes a long way. -- Sue Arnold The Guardian
A clever little book by a neuroscientist translates lofty concepts of infinity and death into accessible human terms. What happens after we die? Eagleman wonders in each of these brief, evocative segments. Are we consigned to replay a lifetime's worth of accumulated acts, as he suggests in "Sum," spending six days clipping your nails or six weeks waiting for a green light? Is heaven a bureaucracy, as in "Reins," where God has lost control of the workload? Will we download our consciousnesses into a computer to live in a virtual world, as suggested in "Great Expectations," where "God exists after all and has gone through great trouble and expense to construct an afterlife for us"? Or is God actually the size of a bacterium, battling good and evil on the "battlefield of surface proteins," and thus unaware of humans, who are merely the "nutritional substrate"? Mostly, the author underscores in "Will-'o-the-Wisp," humans desperately want to matter, and in afterlife search out the "ripples left in our wake." Eagleman's turned out a well-executed and thought-provoking book. (Feb.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
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