Aldous Huxley

"Community, Identity, Stability' is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a 'Feelie, ' a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women...

Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of "half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form." He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens-a path breaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance-bringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight...

Jacob Ericson is a quiet, kind and somewhat simple man who works as a ranch hand for crotchety Professor Carter and his crippled daughter, Sharon, in California's Mojave Desert in the 1920s. Jacob is a good man, genuine, honorable, but hardly extraordinary–until he miraculously heals a dying calf with his hands. However, while he is content to cure the town's animals, it isn't long before he is persuaded to use his gift in other ways. When Sharon,...

"Their Ethiop wives-sleek wineskins of black silk, Jellied and huge from drinking asses' milk Through years of tropical idleness, to pray For offspring (whom he ever sent away With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race Might breed and blacken the earth's comely face." ? Aldous Huxley, Leda Though he gained recognition for his later essays and novels, Aldous Huxley started his writing career as a poet. Published in 1920, Leda is his fourth compilation...

The author's last novel introduces a supposedly Utopian Pacific island where drug use and open sex are encouraged, and children are not at the mercy of one set of parents. In Island, his last novel, Huxley transports us to a Pacific island where, for 120 years, an ideal society has flourished. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala and events begin to move...

One of the most renowned and prolific writers of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley produced not only dystopian fiction like Brave New World and philosophical memoirs like The Doors of Perception, but also insightful travel writing. Here, he discusses his visits to Italy, France, and other European destinations; reflects on cultural landmarks; and ruminates on the benefits and challenges of travel itself, offering a fascinating glimpse into the...

The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959 is a book by Aldous Huxley that compiles his lectures given at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1959, exploring human nature, society, and the modern world's challenges and potentials, synthesized with science, philosophy, and spirituality. In particular, it explores the intricate relationships between scientific progress, individual freedom, and global harmony.

An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley. "The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." With great wit and stunning intellect-drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism,...

The essays in this book cover different subjects, such as morality in arts ('To the Puritan All Things are Impure', a defence of his friend D. H. Lawrence), music ("After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music", he writes in 'The Rest is Silence'), similarities in the behaviour of men and cats ('Sermons in Cats'). Part of these essays may be regarded as a description of changes in society at the first half of the...