Mephisto2

I agree wholeheartedly. Excellent book. Having said that, I wasn't aware that Chomsky was opposed to the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary theory.

Some of my own recommendations include

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...100754-4128640
Landes sets out to examine, discuss and explain why "Some are so poor and some so rich." This book can be considered a narrative history of the West and how its hegemony over the modern world came about. Erudite, opinionated and very enlightening.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...100754-4128640
Diamond begins this book trying to answer the question posed to him by a New Guinean friend "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo ["technology"] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo ["technology"] of our own?" So begins a rollercoaster ride from the evolution of man, the inception of society up to the colonization of the AsiaPacific and Africa. If you've ever wondered why the "West won", then this book is for you. Slightly more readable than Landes's book, it is a deserved winner of the Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize

The Third Chimpanzee by [i]Jared Diamond[/b]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...100754-4128640
Diamond's second book asks the profound question "What is it to be human?" He argues convincingly for chimpanzees to be redesignated as members of the Homo genus and trys to explain why humans are what they are. Very interesting.


There are seveal other history or science books that I could recommend that are not "eye opening" per se, but rather very entertaining and educational. Perhaps another thread.


Mr Mephisto