The Quickening
   Art Bell
  1997 Paper Chase Press New Orleans LA USA
   ISBN: 1879706709


Today's Trends, Tomorrow's World. While exploring the realities of business, religion, communications, environment & more, the forces underlying today's trends are discussed, with an eye to surviving into the future.

One trouble with a book like this is that almost before it's published it becomes outdated. Art Bell, however, has put together all sorts of disparate information bytes, blended them well & composed quite a cogent read, for it's time.

The concept of The Quickening is daunting; things burgeoning exponentially as what we call life, speeds by. So many people making so many things making so much pollution making so much heat making so much climate change making so much...

Really makes you think, although you've got to wonder: What on earth can I do about any of it? Well, read Art Bell's The Quickening & get some ideas. A flaw or two in the text only makes you think the more, i.e., in the Environment chapter in the sub-section: Why Are There More People? the author avoids any politically incorrect confrontation about so many more newborns surviving infancy; so many more children surviving into adulthood & so many more damaged people survivng at all. I realize even mentioning such statistics, is fraught with grotesque scenes of ethnic cleansing or eugenics. I raise this, though, because there are already way too many abandoned children in our world.

I liked The Quickening, thought it expanded my mind. It gleaned all those items of news I'd seen in magazines, papers & programs & thought unrelated, wove them into an eminently readable format to compose an informative overview of what has been happening to the speed of life.
(05/23/99)

Rebecca