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| Brave New World (75th Anniversary Edition) | 
| Author: Aldous Huxley
Creator: Michael York
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.98
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New (26) from $17.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  727 reviews
Sales Rank: 263072
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 7
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.9 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1602833362
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781602833364
ASIN: 1602833362
Publication Date: January 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new audiobook! Delivered direct from our US warehouse by Expedited (4-7 days) or Standard (usually 10-14 days but can be longer). Expedited shipping recommended for speedier delivery. Over 1 million satisfied customers
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| Customer Reviews:
"the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do" April 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Due to years of hypnopedia, the two million inhabitants of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, work contentedly day after day and year after year at the job for which they have been conditioned. Beyond the brainwashing, the sole motivator for their uncomplaining efforts is a psychotropic drug called Soma. But one citizen, Bernard Marx, an Alpha Plus psychologist (top of the pecking order) and hypnopedia expert during the time in which Brave New World is set, 632 A.F. (in the year of Our Ford), is feeling disillusioned. His pat reply to the sunny phrases (like (p 50) "Everybody's happy now,") spewed regularly by members of the brainwashed masses, is that particular mantra's conditioning regime (e.g. (p 62) "Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half"). Wanting to establish a nontraditional relationship with a woman "known" to many, Lenina Crowne, he entices her with a date involving entry to a place of limited access: the Savage Reservation, where humans are viviparous (elsewhere, humans are fertilized and formed entirely in test tubes). The couple is stunned at what they encounter: an elderly man, a woman nursing, and a slovenly, aged-looking mystery woman from their own world (off reservation, humans are chemically "preserved" into youthfulness until age 60). Unsurprisingly, the mystery woman and her son, ostracized for their differences on reservation, fare even worse in the Other Place.
Beyond the obvious issues like social class, behavioral conditioning, cloning, religion, morality, mortality and cultural differences between peoples, are those involving world politics and politicians. Huxley's fantastic, futuristic tale, first published in 1932, was ahead of its time in many ways, and will likely strike a chord with readers one and all. Also good, 1984 by George Orwell, The Giver by Lois Lowery, and Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.
Brave New World April 16, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ****
The precursor to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, and the opposite theory. This was and still is one of the most important novels in the history of novels. Huxleys thoughts on a world obsessed with sex, and personal pleasures is so relevant today.
The premise of the book is that the previous world the one we knew in the 1920's was replaced by one obsessed with personal fulfillment with reckless abandon for others and yet we still 'all belong to one another.' It is a hard concept to rap your head around which makes this a challenging and fulfilling read. Though sometimes the book lags in places it makes up for it in others.
Though it was written so long ago the book shows a chilling truth to today's world much like Nineteen Eighty Four does but on a different plain. It is worth the read if you are really interested with an open mind and have patience but if not, then don't even try.
Take the red pill.... April 11, 2008
I read this book for the first time only recently, and couldn't help but notice the parallel with the movie Gattaca. If you liked that movie, you'll no doubt like this book as well. I appreciate this way this book forces you to examine your relationship with pleasure and mindless entertainment. Do we really, after all, just want to turn our brains off and experience a constant stream of pleasure? Too frequently I find myself not wanting to pick up a certain movie or book because I know I will have to think. And after, all I could always just pop in, say, a Spiderman movie and enjoy not being challenged at all. Ultimately, this book makes me think (Matrix style) if I had a pill that would numb away everything bad about life and give me pleasure, would I take it. Would you?
 Way Ahead of its time, and durable March 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This novel is a biting critique of the over-scientification of the emerging modern world, and in particular a scathing critique of early movements towards behavioral conditioning, as well as towards psychoanalysis, mass production, the use of drugs to affect and modify behavior, as well as mass consumerism, all of which had begun to appear around the turn of the 20th Century.
Huxley creates an imaginary "overly controlled," "overly conditioned" and "overly bureaucratized" utopia, one that was supposed to produce world stability and unattainable and unimaginable individual happiness under a regime of benign tyranny. However, when judged by the results and effects on its inhabitants, the utopia turns out to be just the opposite: an avowed dystopia.
Mustapha Mond, one of the characters and a member of the ruling elite had decided that all of art must be sacrificed in order to increase the overall happiness of the society. But in a discussion with an inhabitant who existed on the margins of the managed state, he was surprised to learn that the individual, the character, John Savage, disagreed with him and made the radical claim that in order to be free, and even to maximize happiness, people must be allowed the right to be unhappy as well to be happy.
From before birth until they were in the grave, the lives of the inhabitants of Huxley's imaginary London were conditioned so that every aspect of their lives were carefully managed by strict rules and by state administered drugs to create the kind of behavior that best suited the needs of those ruling the state. Even fetuses were treated chemically to produce the kind of intelligence that the ruling bureaucrats had decided were in the best interests of the kind of societal stratifications and chosen roles within society that the ruling elites had decided were necessary.
American satire rarely gets better than this and not since George Orwell's Animal Farm and his equally effective, 1984, has a single piece of political fiction sounded as many cautionary alarm bells as this cautionary tale. It has proven amazingly durable and prescient in retrospect.
Five Stars.
ETA on time; wonderful piece for my H.S. classes March 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
for five years I've been using the cassettes of York narrating this novel, using it for my high school classes. It's been enlightening my students and I wanted to upgrade to CD's
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