How to Live Forever or Die Trying: On the New Immortality - Couverture souple

'Concise, clear and phenomenally interesting' Alexander Waugh, Literary Review
'I want to live for ever!' sang the Kids from Fame, and they are not alone: the search for immortality has been a constant human refrain throughout history. But medical science has improved at an exponential rate in recent decades, and there are those who believe that the first person to live to be 1,000 years old has already been born.
What has happened to get people so excited about the prospect of eternal life? And if they are right, what would it mean for us as human beings? Both a hugely entertaining history of our obsession with immortality and a revealing snapshot of how it is being pursued, How to Live Forever or Die Trying tackles these and myriad other questions with dazzling skill.
'[Appleyard] is a fine and lucid writer who has produced a book which bubbles with information as well as consistently stimulating speculation' John Preston, Sunday Telegraph
'His writing has a sinuous insistence, and this fusion of memoir, travelogue and science fact is mostly a provocative delight' John O'Connell, Time Out
'There are some moments, common only to the best popular science books, when [the] author makes the reader feel like a genius . . . This is a serious, frightening, at times brilliant book on immortality' William Leith, Spectator
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9781416522836

"I want to live for ever" sang the Kids from Fame, and they are not alone: the search for immortality has been a constant human refrain throughout history. But medical science has improved at an exponential rate in recent decades and there are those who believe that the ability to cheat death will soon be within our reach: the first person to live to be 1,000 years old has, they say, already been born.
What has happened to get people so excited about the prospect of eternal life? And if they are right, what would it mean for us as human beings? If death became negotiable, would we still fall in love or have children? Would we still, in fact, be human? HOW TO LIVE FOREVER OR DIE TRYING tackles these and myriad other questions with dazzling skill. Funny, thought-provoking and often profound, it manages to grapple with the big issues of existence without blinding the reader with science, and sheds new light on why we are the way we are.