Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Walker Percy is very much a modern-day Pascal, in that he is wrapped up in the project of waking up modern man from his numb, jaded, over-entertained stupor into realizing what a predicament he is in. It's an existentialist concern, in the Christian-existentialist sense of Kierkegaard, especially insofar as both Percy and the Melancholy Dane are obsessed with the problem of subjectivity, and our awareness of it, and the paltry... Read Full Review

I have just finished reading _Lost in the Cosmos_ and it is not too early to say that I shall never be able to get it entirely out of my mind. Certainly not a history book in the sense that while it touches somewhat upon past civilizations, certain societies, or so-called great men, it does not do so in any great detail. It is, instead, the history of peoples' relationships with one another, and the ramifications of choices... Read Full Review

Allow me to shout it to the clouds: "I AM A PRODUCT OF WALKER PERCY!"With Phil Donahue back on the air, Walker Percy's 1983 self-help book seems less dated now then it did in 1995 when I first read it. Now as then, it packs a wallop.Those reviews calling it a satire are being a little misleading. This book actually IS a self-help book. In fact, it is probably the only self-help book out there. While traditional self-help books... Read Full Review

One of the five subtitles of this impossibly good book reads: "How it is possible for the man who designed Voyager 19, which arrived at Titania, a satellite of Uranus, three seconds off schedule and a hundred yards off course after a flight of six years, to be one of the most screwed-up creatures in California-or the Cosmos"This book defies description. Dr. Percy is unrelenting in forcing the reader to examine the disasters... Read Full Review

A perfect companion to Carl Sagan's Contact, Lost in the Cosmos takes the reader on a parodic self-help journey from the depths of the human soul to the furthest reaches of outer space. The result is a caustic, witty, existential, and profoundly moving revelation about why we'd rather see our neighbor's house burn down than live through another Wednesday afternoon, among other things. The first part of the book is "the last... Read Full Review