(T) "p" is a true sentence if and only if p

N'est ce pas?

Comprehensive. However, with a topic this extensive, not that I am suggesting that Anderson is trying to do this, but it is difficult to produce the definitive PoMo piece. Postmodern thought is the academic topic of the day - or maybe the era. It has replaced Existentialism as the topic of discussion all over the place as THE coffee shop conversation topic. Anderson takes the bull by the horn and comes up with a 4-part book that will certainly prove useful as a primer and will help you impress your friends. Part one and two sets out to define and to explain vocabulary. Part three deals with the construction of self. Part four takes on a more macro look (globalization) and closes with the positive side of postmodern discourse.

Thing with this collection is that it is very difficult to go wrong when you include such notables as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty. PoMo philosophers are taking on deity status that was reserved for existentialist celebrities like Heidegger and Sartre. Despite the lack of popular appeal due to purposeful ambiguity as well as the difficulty of the material, it has taken academia by storm.

A dense book, it is packed with information. Despite the range and complexity, I highly recommend "The Truth about the Truth" as a starter kit only. The collection does not really prepare students to discuss this stuff in class in any detail - mind you this is my opinion only and it could change as folks find it a good book for an introduction class. Anderson does a fantastic job. We ignore this stuff at our own risk. Be prepared.

Miguel Llora

To many readers, postmodernism (PoMo) is a vexed subject, smacking of trendy intellectual fashion. However one views it, Anderson's book collects a number of essays on the topic that anyone interested in the dominant ideas of the day should not be without. The entries are not lengthy and therefore persuasive depth should not be expected. Put them together, however, and a pretty complete overview of PoMo is before you. The editor has fashioned a nifty little introduction that lays out the general orientation in clear and understandable language - a not inconsiderable feat given the subject matter.

One point worth noting that is not in the book. Beneath the ideas promoted by PoMo lies a sociological reality captured in that forbidding word "multi-culturalism". There are many different cultures in the world whose customs and mores project many different kinds of worlds. This fact does seem to leave us with no common frame of reference to judge any of them as superior, a key PoMo conclusion. In that sense, postmodernism appears to be the perfect philosophical expression of an emerging multicultural reality. Nevertheless, wedging beneath the world's many and various cultures is another emergent reality - the global consolidation of private property, as represented by trans-national corporations and international trade agreements. Beneath PoMo's relativizing of cultural absolutes, there moves the monolithic grip of global capitalism, homogenizing all cultures in a consumerist vat. It at least deserves consideration that the former serves to conceal the latter from the view of secular intellectuals like post-modernists, and thus becomes the perfect cultural expression of a consolidating world order. Put another way, the power of Pepsi has conquered the outdated truths of reason and anyone who complains is practicing cultural imperialism. So go with the flow. Readers interested in how PoMo serves the powers-that-be should consult Terry Eagleton or Frederick Jameson.

Anderson provides an enlightening and accessible look at the multitude of changes taking place today that are usually characterized by the word 'globalization'. As he so clearly points out, these changes are not merely economic, although such changes are important, but also political, cultural and biological. This broader framework is likely to be important to those who would better understand (and perhaps alter) the course of globalization.

Anderson notes that nations are increasingly losing their closed character (and becoming more open), a development exemplified by the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In consequence of this, individual nations have less control over their economic, political, cultural and biological dimensions, and there is an increased need for associations of nations. It should be noted, however, that Anderson is skeptical about the likelihood of the emergence of global government.

A particularly useful part of Anderson's book is the classification of attitudes toward globalization that he presents in Chapter 12 ("Global Visions and Divisions"). They are: the globalist right; the globalist left; the antiglobalist right; and the antiglobalist left. With this classification in hand, one can better grasp the discomfort many people feel with the process of globalization, as well as why some people are working so hard to advance it.

What Anderson does, therefore, is develop a more nuanced view of what globalization is and a more nuanced view of individual responses to globalization. He makes globalization more complex, but it is surely not something to be addressed in a simple-minded fashion.

The day I read the title of this book, my fears of the last 30 years were gone. It was stating the obvious, so obvious that not many managed to grasp it. Since humankind started to record history 5500 years ago and maybe long before, we are living in the First Global Civilisation. A civilisation that spans the planet and already goes beyond with human space missions, satellites, probes and robots.

It started with Columbus and global travel. Then this new civilisation which was born thanks to long distance communication (telegraph in the 19th century, later phone, telex, fax, internet) is reshaping our lives in different ways: at home, in cities, in our workplace, in our environment, in our information, in our bio-information, in the perception we have from ourselves.

In this perspective one understands the meaning of the 20th century, a transition between a set of civilisations gradually conquered by the West that took their independance but that remained connected into a global civilisation with multiple centers influencing each other.

We are a sentient specie (author calls us a global animal) rather than an American, an European, a Japanese and our problems are not national problems but global or human problems.

Global civilisation because it allows us to have a global vision of our planet (remember this picture taken from the Moon in 1969 showing Earth as a blue oasis in the middle of nowhere), to realize we have an ecosystem to which our survival is attached, to see the multiplicity of our beliefs and religions, the interraction of cultures, those who accept an open society and take ideas from abroad and those who refuse and fight against it. Sometimes the same people but on different subjects.

Global civilisation does not only have states (more than 200 ranging from tiny Monaco or Vatican to US, Canada, Russia, India and China), NGOs (US Aid, Red Cross, ... ) but 400 international organisations including the UN, NATO, ASEAN, the Arab League and the European Union, 38,000 transnational or global corporations (global because because they adapted to the environment faster than others), non-state actors (billionaires, drugs lords, terrorists), religions (many with the biggest being Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism all calling for more than 1 billion members), citizens as individuals or organised in communities and organisations. All those interract to form our present world.

It does have an informal governance, a reunion of different spheres of the global civilisation but no global government (note: civilisations with multiple polities and no centralized government are numerous in the past: Mesopotamia, Greece, Mayan civilisation, Western Europe, India and China for some periods of their history).

This global civilisation triggers reactions, vision and divisions: anti-globalization, environment movements, labour movements, etc...

Although some author opinions will not be shared by everybody, it is concise, clear, well-written, easy to understand and easy to make its own opinion about the event we are all living today. Vision about life, job, travel, environment, foreign relations will be changed for ever. A true paradigm shift that makes sense of the last decades and removes the anguish felt by many in front of this changing and sometimes crual society. Once read, you feel just like a kid which became familiar to his new house. And more, you are astonished you did not realize it earlier while it was so obvious.

THis is a great book, indeed a brilliant introduction on the issue of managing our biological resources in a global economy. WTA is a lucid writer and original thinker, far better - and far more realistica and moderate - about these issues than the more well known activists like Rifkin. Indeed, this book was so interesting for me that it re-oriented my interests to the environement, the uses of biotech, and biodiversity. This is a masterpiece of synthesis and sensible advice, made palpable by clear writing.

Warmly recommended.

Anderson argues that evolution has accelerated tremendously as a result of the "augmentation" of humans through technology. Because Anderson is so enthralled with technological developments, he doesn't pay much attention to the downside. He breathlessly reports on one invention after another without acknowledging that they don't always work the way they're supposed to. For example, he talks about the wonders of penile implants without saying a word about all the problems people have experienced with them. Anderson talks in grant generalizations that are removed from concrete reality. He likes to think of himself as the practical guy in the middle of the extremists of the right and left, but he is basically setting up straw men; he exhibits little interest in trying to understand where they are really coming from. So, for example, he portrays what he calls "the Far Green" as follows: "By demonizing technology, it renders itself incapable of helping us to understand life in a high-technology, informatizing world." If he stopped to think about what he means by "demonizing technology," he would realize how nonsensical his charge is. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of some environmentalists, but Anderson makes no attempt to evaluate them fairly.

The title is misleading for this book in that it is only peripherally concerned with Darwin's theory. The subtitle is only slightly better. The difficulty in naming this book is its interdisciplinary nature. Anderson covers biology, cybernetics, information technology, agriculture, environmentalism, and genetic research. Although all are specialized fields, Anderson shows how they interact with each other cud every one of us. It is an exciting time to be alive, Anderson says.

Like many popular books on science, Evolution starts off slowly. Because Anderson cannot be sure of the background that every reader brings to his book, he spends the first half of each section in a survey of one or two of his inter-connected subjects. Interspersed in the survey are some delectable bits of controversy and discovery, but he saves the items That have the most impact for the last sections. Since the book is organized into four different sections, this makes for a thrilling roller coaster ride through some of the most exiting terrain in science today.

In the first 50 pages, I was somewhat bored by Anderson's prose (he is no David Quammen) and slightly skeptical of his early opinions. At the halfway point I realized that I was reading much more smoothly and often nodding my head at the text. When I found myself quoting this book at a business meeting the next day, I knew I was learning from this book.

Anderson's basic thesis is that humans have taken control of their own evolution, and the mechanisms of this control are the convergence of biology and technology, and seen today in the growing field of biotech. I have long thought that information is the opposite of entropy (in a local sense) and Anderson closely dovetails into this idea with his concept of information being the control mechanism by which we modify our biological environment. In a sense we have done this in the past, through the use of corrective lenses and vaccines. But these are only baby steps compared to the strides we may be capable of shortly.

Anderson's personal background is rooted in the environmental movement (which, if you were unaware of it, you find out in the last section), and his moderate stance on certain issues is quite refreshing compared to the demagoguery we are subjected to daily. While you may disagree with his predictions, it is important to think about and discuss them.

I've read a lot of books on biotechnology, and I have to say that this is my absolute favorite. Dr. Anderson has tremendous insight, and does a nice job explaining this how this tremendously powerful technology is going to affect all of us, and in fact already does. An excellent book.

Anderson basis his book on an argument that has little to do with analysis and much to do with superficially convincing the reader to accept his position as true. It makes me so upset when writers attempt to manipulate the reader, as if we are stupid and cannot distinguish between real evidence and the general, abstract references he has presented. I hope that this book will not be taken seriously by the readers, and that someday someone will explicate these theories in a REAL analysis.

Anderson describes a world in which the self is endangered, nearing extinction. Though his style is charming, funny, appealing to the masses, his ideas, as innovative as they seem, really have too many loopholes to be accepted in the academic world. It is a glitzy, superficial book making a circular argument about the "liberation" of the human being from the concept of self. The idea is good, but each chapter really needs a lot more explaining to really get to the whys and hows of things, if he's really serious about making a social statement. Otherwise, this book is as souless as the society he describes.

As a novice to the world of post-modern philosophy, I found this book helpful in starting the inquiry into the terms, ideas, and metaphors used to explain the post-modern point of view. While obviously not an academic rendering, Anderson's style of writing is informative and journalistic. He may not be accurate in all that he reports, but his book has motivated me seek out more information.