The Lucifer principle.

It started out great! then it crashed down... I really feel sad because at first I thought “PHEWWWWWWWW! A good philosophy book, the first ever since Camus's La pest, a year and a half ago” But now, I am envelopped with great misery because this book didn't work out for me :(
Some arguments weren't, even if he was right, sufficiently justified.
At other times, he gave sooooo many examples and names of searchers and scientists that his own argument gets lost and absorbed into the so many examples. You just lose the argument.
At first, I thought this is a sarcastic person, and I love sarcasm in books, then he turned towards this person who, at the end of each chapter, will conclude his point of view with that “epic” highly ridiculous sentence.

I really tried to love you, little book, I did :( and it feels me with great chagrin that I didn't :(

This turned out to be a good recommendation from Jim. Though it looks like a daunting book, this one is written rather well, and keeps the reader engaged using short data-filled chapters. Basically, Bloom introduces us to the concept of the social superorganism that encompasses religion, politics, and family life. Rather than a single human going through life looking to simply have a child to continue on his/her genetic line, most of our species pursue an entirely different goal - learning (subscribing to new memes) as well as propagating (getting others to get on board). This extremely interesting concept is basically exclusive to humans, with a few exceptions mainly in primate behavior.

The book goes on to talk quite a bit about the history of memes, including specific religious history, economic history, military history, and political history. Much of this is very engrossing. He applies pecking order to the superorganisms, claiming that they are all striving to reach the top, usually by asserting their power over an inferior superorganism. He then argues that this implies the current leader in the pecking order must keep arms against those wishing to top it. He argues that Ancient China failed because of disarmament, and Britain's economy in the 19th century was overtaken by the Germans because of arrogance and incompetence of the pecking order leader.

He has some very strong negative opinions of Islam, many of which he justifies or attempts to justify in the book. There is a good discussion on the difference between Shiite and Sunni Muslims as well. Yet, it's hard to put him on one side or the other of the American political spectrum, as he makes many arguments against the Republicans' actions in the text.

Overall, this was a very good read, and I'm interested in reading his other work.

I just, hmm. I don't really know. I've owned this book for at least a decade, and I think I started it a few times over the years but never was able to finish it. The first couple of chapters (about humans being part of a superorganism, and ideas/memes using us to reproduce themselves) are actually pretty interesting, but the remaining 80% of the book is basically depressing, scientifically-tenuous and hard to follow.

It has some interesting ideas in it, at varying levels of believability. It strays dangerously into evopsych/biological determinism territory and has some weirdly anti-feminist / anti-Moslem tirades (all the more nauseating because he attempts to use Science and Rationality to back up some incredibly offensive assertions, drawing on supporting data which is heavily-biased, at best).

I also have a queasy feeling that someone could read this book and use it to justify/rationalize all sorts of mistreatment of others.