Captivating…brilliant…enthralling…dazzling.

—The New York Times Book Review

A guide to the big ideas about the future of our species…. The stakes in thinking all this through are enormous.

—The Washington Post Book World

Today's the day I blow big sunshine up your ass by telling you I just finished "Radical Evolution" and loved it. Even started taking the VRE to work for more time to read. This, coming from a former PE major and airborne ranger who's a slow learner anyway. Shit-hot read. —Richard Spearman, DARPA The focus of Garreau’s book … is not on the nuts and bolts of the technology itself but rather on what it will all mean for us humans…. Garreau is constantly on the lookout for the human story behind the ideas.

—Scientific American

The focus of Garreau’s book … is not on the nuts and bolts of the technology itself but rather on what it will all mean for us humans…. Garreau is constantly on the lookout for the human story behind the ideas.

—Scientific American

Am enthralled…. This is the perfect "beach read" .… Deserves serious attention for its potential to turn the world upside down and inside out in the relatively near future…. Great news: It's extremely readable!

—Tom Peters, tompeters.com

One of my favorite cutting-edge thinkers.

—John Tierney, The New York Times

An eye-opening exploration of how cutting-edge 21st-century technologies, in embryonic form right now, pose the stark alternatives of a real-life Utopia or Brave New World…. Collectively, they could produce ‘the biggest change in 50,000 years in what it means to be human’…. Garreau has an eye for the anecdote that throws much of this .. into compelling human terms…. Excellent.

—Kirkus Reviews

Mr. Garreau is a zesty storyteller, a gonzo futurist who builds alternative universes from solid science, and he’s neither a technology booster nor a Luddite. The questions his moral quandaries raise are among the deepest questions we know how to ask: What kind of creatures are we — the apelike animals from which we evolved, or the angels we imagine we can become? If we accept the Darwinian explanation of our origins, where do we want to go next, now that we’re harnessing the very engines of evolution? Is there a “too far” for biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence? And what would anyone be able to do about it if there really is a line that technology shouldn’t cross — a line that could mean the end of Homo sapiens?

—'Strategy+Business' Top Business Books

Provocative…intriguing…compelling and important and could change our world forever. There's no one better than Joel Garreau to explain this…. Garreau is an underappreciated national treasure.

—BookReporter

We already have one foot into the next stage of human evolution…. [Garreau] poses courageous questions for a brave new world.

—Barnes and Noble

One of the most provocative, entertaining and, yes, frightening science books in years…. [Garreau] is a solid researcher with a fine sense of storytelling.

—San Jose Mercury News

Garreau functions as a prophet and a seer.

—Zygon, Journal of Religion and Science

Clarifying and companionable … the technoscenarios Garreau explicates are riveting, and of acute importance, as is his reminder that there is much more to life than technology, no matter how amazing it gets.

—Booklist

Given Garreau’s accurate track record for predicting change, I take Radical Evolution very seriously. In his two previous books, The Nine Nations of North America and Edge City, he brilliantly predicted the influence of emerging urban and political changes.

—Politics and Prose

Science buffs fascinated by the leading edges of societal and technological change and readers concerned by the ethical issues that change presents will find much to ponder in Garreau's nonjudgmental look into our possible futures.

—Publisher’s Weekly

The truly outstanding feature of Garreau’s highly literate work is its scope and complexity.… Radical Evolution doesn’t just present the Big Ideas of pundits as diverse as transhumanist Raymond Kurzweil or rogue techno-luddite Theodore Kaczynski, but puts them in context with thoughts from Blaise Pascal, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.

—NuSapiens

A magnificent job…. We’d better start deciding, now, what kind of world it will be.

—Georgia Straight, Vancouver

Self-consciously fair, and very readable.

—GreenBiz

Wonderful.

—The Washington Times

So cutting edge it seems mind-boggling.

—National Geographic Online

Page-turner…. Provides the framework for a ‘conversation’ about the social, political, religious and cultural implications of technological advances that continue to unfold at warp speed.

—Fauquier Citizen

Fascinating and disturbing.

—New York Sun

How weird, how soon? That’s the question that dominates the debates about the coming of ‘post-humanity.’ With his customary journalistic acumen and wry humor, Garreau has the answer: much weirder than you imagine, much sooner than you expect.

—Stewart Brand

Joel Garreau lives well ahead of the curve – even the really big Curve he describes in these pages. One of our foremost chroniclers of change and historians of the future, he’s done it again.

—Bill McKibben

Joel Garreau has hit upon something critical here, something most of us see daily and struggle to make sense of: that human technology may be advancing faster than our ability to adapt, leaving us ill-equipped to measure and manage the comsequences. This is a timely, important book, and a fascinating read.

—Nathan McCall

It isn't often an author gets to herald the biggest news in the last 10,000 years. But you'll get the full, uncensored, mind-blowing report here in this entertaining and surprisingly deep book. Meet soldiers who don't sleep, animals controlled with joy sticks, computers controlled by merely thinking, the blind driving cars, and parents designing their kids -- and that is just what is happening right now. Veteran scout Joel Garreau prepares ordinary readers for the ultimate question of this century: Who do you think we should be? He makes it clear that as of today, human nature is now under the control of humans, and we ARE doing something about it -- but we aren't aware of it. To guide you through this boggle Garreau offers astonishments, conundrums, and sanity.

—Kevin Kelly

[Garreau] has a knack for asking questions that deliver unexpected answers. I have known some of the people in this book for over two decades, and yet I caught myself surprised again and again. Alone, these details would not amount to much, but collectively they are “ground truth” in a map that Joel builds of this emergent landscape of techno-human co-evolution.

—Paul Saffo, Global Business Network

Am enthralled by Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human." [Garreau] takes on a hair-raising tour of the life sciences—focused on amazing stuff that's already well underway. This is the perfect "beach read" ... which deserves serious attention for its potential to turn the world upside down and inside out in the relatively near future (next 2 decades, per Garreau). Great news: It's extremely readable!

-Tom Peters

An eye-opening exploration of how cutting-edge 21st-century technologies, in embryonic form right now, pose the stark alternatives of a real-life Utopia or Brave New World. Information power has been doubling every 18 months or so, at an exponential rate of change, and computer breakthroughs are also producing innovations in biology. The result is that four interrelated technologies-genetic, robotic, informational and nano processes-hold the potential to modify human nature itself. Collectively, they could produce "the biggest change in 50,000 years in what it means to be human." Forget stem-cell research or steroid-boosted athletes: Technologies now being developed privately or by government agencies could soon bring about such possibilities as children boosting their SAT scores by 200 points, the aging being outfitted with memory enhancers, or soldiers being made able to hoist 180 pounds as if it were 4.4 pounds. Society might then be divided between the "enhanced" (those with physical and mental upgrades) versus the "naturals." Drawing on a series of interviews with scientists and other futurists, Washington Post editor and reporter Garreau (Edge City, 1991, etc.) spells out three scenarios: "Heaven," a biological utopia where poverty, disease and ignorance are eradicated; "Hell," a dystopia that could include bioterror, inequality based on biological advantage, control of mankind by machines and nuclear catastrophe; and "Prevail," the author's preference, in which the future doesn't arrive by a predetermined curve, but in a series of starts and stops, with humans acting to forestall disaster. Garreau has an eye for the anecdote that throws much of this Buck Rogers technology intocompelling human terms (as when an administrator in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency labors on human enhancement research in the hope that it will someday help his daughter, a cerebral palsy victim). Excellent scientific journalism on the challenges arising from a real tipping point in human relations.

-Kirkus Reviews

We are facing "the biggest change in 50,000 years in what it means to be human," writes Garreau, of the Washington Post, thanks to the swiftly evolving GRIN technologies, that is, genetic, robotic, information, and nano. To get a sense of the possible implications of these paradigm-altering developments, he speaks with scientists who fall roughly into two opposing mind-sets: those who view technology as a stairway to a heaven in which humans perfect the body and greatly extend the mind, and those who see a grimly hellish future in which self-replicating microbes, nanobots, or "enhanced" humans turn viciously against their creators. Clarifying and companionable, Garreau explains astonishing discoveries, ponders just how intimately connected we are to our digital tools, surveys speculative fiction classics, and profiles such visionaries as heaven-inclined Raymond Kurzweil, hell-fearing William Joy, and Jaron Lanier, the virtual-reality guru, who offers a less extreme, more commonsensible vision of the future based on humankind's muddled but powerful instinct to do the right thing. The technoscenarios Garreau explicates are riveting, and of acute importance, as is his reminder that there is much more to life than technology, no matter how amazing it gets.

Washington Post journalist Garreau is a perceptive observer of change. Describing the remarkable progress being made in biotechnology, he warns that science is poised to make striking advances in human potential through genetic enhancement. Given Garreau’s accurate track record for predicting change, I take Radical Evolution very seriously. In his two previous books, The Nine Nations of North America and Edge City, he brilliantly predicted the influence of emerging urban and political changes. In reporting the astounding advancement being made toward our scientific ability to transform human beings, Garreau points out that our progress is increasing exponentially. He predicts scenarios of Heaven and Hell, and suggests ways of controlling change so that the most hellish scenarios do not occur. Religion can help establish an ethical basis for decision-making. Religious groups that try to outlaw change in the United States will only shift the conversation to other nations.

Carla Cohen
POLITICS & PROSE BOOK STORE IN WASHINGTON DC

Technologies are accelerating so rapidly that they are changing us in essential ways. Even today, advances in technology are being perfected that will alter our minds, our memories, our metabolism, our personalities, our progeny; even our genetic makeup. According to Washington Post cultural correspondent Joel Garreau, we already have one foot into the next stage of human evolution. The author of Edge City maintains that these inward-turning innovations raise serious questions about the future of our culture, society, and humanity itself. He poses courageous questions for a brave new world.

BARNES & NOBLE

Washington Post reporter Garreau takes readers on a cross-country trip into the future as he interviews scientists and other thinkers grappling with the implications of our newfound-and, to some, frightening-knowledge of the genome. Highlighting what he calls "the Curve"-the rate of exponential change in technology-Garreau (Edge City: Life on the New Frontier) breaks the central part of his book into four scenarios. In "Heaven," genetic engineering will make us stronger and healthier, help us live longer and metabolize our food more efficiently. "Hell" resembles the island of Dr. Moreau: science runs amok, we cripple the genome of our food supplies, and babies are born with unexpected deformities instead of the improved characteristics promised by gene therapies. The "Prevail" scenario might also be called Muddling Through: even if we make a mistake now and then, we will figure out how to slow potentially harmful changes and speed up potentially beneficial ones. Last, "Transcend" considers that humans might conquer the difficulties that lie ahead and emerge into a new age beyond our wildest dreams. Science buffs fascinated by the leading edges of societal and technological change and readers concerned by the ethical issues that change presents will find much to ponder in Garreau's nonjudgmental look into our possible futures.

Joel Garreau's provocative new book, RADICAL EVOLUTION, begins with a thought experiment. Sometime in the future, your young daughter returns from her first year at law school. She comes home talking not about torts or civil procedure or the Rule in Shelley's Case, but about her classmates. And these classmates, as it turns out, are a bit different. Many of them have been, in some way or another, "enhanced." She ticks off the various ways that the enhancement takes effect --- internal wireless modems that download any piece of information needed directly into the brain, something akin to telepathy, self-healing, and (at least in theory) immortality in its own self. Garreau uses this thought experiment to ask the serious questions about the coming revolutions in genetics and technology that are radically changing human evolution --- and whether such radical changes are beneficial or possibly ultimately harmful to the very idea of humanity itself. My question is more basic: why are all these smart, talented, "enhanced" people choosing to go to law school? Garreau doesn't answer that one (as well he might not). Instead, he makes the point that if anyone in the real world really had these sort of powers, we would actually have a referent for it in the pages of Marvel Comics, in the person of Captain America. Garreau visits the super-secret defense laboratories of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where they're working on super-suits that could do for the soldiers of the future what Captain America got with an exposure to "vita-rays." And since the most well-known product from DARPA research is this Internet on which you are reading this very book review at this very moment, it's a good bet that at least some of the gee-whiz technologies they're working on will pay off, and pay off big. The best and most intriguing parts of RADICAL EVOLUTION are the parts about laboratories and the people who work in them, and the different applications that the new genetic and nanotechnology scientists are coming up with. The research --- which is either promising or horrifying, depending on your point of view of any given issue --- is compelling and important, and could change our world forever. There's no one better than Joel Garreau to explain this. Garreau is an underappreciated national treasure. His first two books were landmarks in their fields. THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA is more timely now than it was when it was published in the early 1980s; it does more to explain the so-called "red state/blue state" divide than pretty much all the political commentary written since the 2000 election. And EDGE CITY described the ongoing revolution in city and suburban planning. RADICAL EVOLUTION purports to do the same for the technologies that promise to change our bodies, our genomes, and possibly even our nature as human beings. That RADICAL EVOLUTION doesn't quite meet the gold standard of Garreau's earlier works may have more to do with the unsettled nature of the technology than anything else. Both NINE NATIONS and EDGE CITY had to do, largely, with maps, with tracking the course of the shifting borders between East and West, North and South, downtown and suburbia. There aren't any maps to speak of with the emerging technologies --- or if they are, they're of the fragmented, medieval variety. Here there be monsters. Garreau's work is divided into different scenarios. One that he calls "Heaven" is largely the vision of Ray Kurzweil, one of the founders of modern assistive technology. (About half of the technologies discussed in RADICAL EVOLUTION are designed to be assistive technologies to help make people with disabilities more independent.) Kurzweil imagines a future where the positive aspects of the new technology are available freely to everyone, allowing each of us to customize our own selves to the point where immortality --- or complete spiritual freedom from the body, if that's what you want --- is more than a promise or a legend or a fable. Countering Kurzweil's vision are the prophets of doom, led by Silicon Valley pioneer Bill Joy, who worry that unrestricted experimentation with self-replicating nanobots could result in the entire planet --- you, me, and everything around us, right down to the core --- turned into food for invisible, ravenous robots. This "grey goo" nightmare is cataloged by Garreau in his "Hell" scenario, along with other dystopias of the "Brave New World" variety. C.S. Lewis wrote that the greatest evil "is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lit offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices." This is almost entirely the environment in which RADICAL EVOLUTION takes place, in the laboratories, in the offices, in the academies.We do not, as of yet, know the nature of these technologies or what they will do for us --- or to us. The promise is that they will help us, cure us, or possibly even assist us in transforming into something beautiful and splendid. The danger is that they will destroy us totally or take away some of that which makes us human. Garreau brings up two other scenarios --- "Prevail" and "Transcend," which posit that there will be a struggle in dealing with the new technologies, but that the worst of the "Hell" scenarios can be avoided. But there is no way, now, to know which of these scenarios will win out. Perhaps the most frightening thing about the impact of these new technologies is that they leave Garreau --- one of the brightest, most perceptive people out there --- not knowing what will happen next. RADICAL EVOLUTION, if it does nothing else, helps us realize that there's a lot left to understand, and an uncertain future ahead.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds
BOOKREPORTER.COM