Dreaming of Forever

It is with immense relief and trepidation that I hereby solemnly declare that the neverending book I’ve been working on since forever will soon be released. The actual release date is August 20th, 2013. Infinity: here we come!

The title?
The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever.

The story?
A writer’s quest to learn about the quest for eternity.

The opening line?
“We’re forever dreamers.”

How do you write a press release about dreaming of forever? Here’s what the wonderful team at Scribner came up with:

Immortality: The most universal human obsession. Throughout time, humans have attempted to make sense of death—and defy it—and uncover the secret of eternal life. Religions promise life beyond death, explorers seek fabled fountains of youth, poets strive for immortal verse, and parents can live on through their progeny. Whether we do so consciously or not, we all dance with immortality in one form or another. Some—looking to advances in technology and medicine—even believe that immortality may be achieved in the next few decades.

In THE BOOK OF IMMORTALITY: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever (Scribner; On-sale 8/20/13), Adam Leith Gollner, author of the widely-acclaimed book The Fruit Hunters, dives headfirst into this juicy, logic-defying world. With his journalistic daggers out, Gollner meets a strange array of contemporary and historical characters, cults, religions, and get-rich entrepreneurs. His journey in the THE BOOK OF IMMORTALITY spans the Northwest continent, making stops at a 2068 party thrown by a group of immortalists in California and at David Copperfield’s supposed fountain of youth in the Bahamas. From Harvard Medical School to Sufi temples and rabbinical sanctums to mineral hot springs at Califonia’s Esalen Institute, Gollner canvasses modern culture for telling examples of the lengths—and expense—humans will go to live forever. He peers into the massive anti-aging industry, interviewing pharmaceutical researchers crafting life-extension pills, and techno-prophets promising to conquer the “disease” of aging. Are these scientific materialists on the verge of existence-altering breakthroughs?—or are they merely updating an ancient dream with new folly?

In THE BOOK OF IMMORTALITY, Gollner discusses:
• The connection between bereavement and a belief in immortality, near death experiences (NDEs), and the ways in which various religions approach death and what comes after it

• The Fountain of Youth mythology and the significance of water symbolism in immortality belief

• Gollner’s surreal experience on David Copperfield’s private island, Musha Cay, and the Prospero-like quality with which the magician runs it

• Attempts throughout history to extend life with harmful chemicals, particularly mercury, and other nutty ways people have sought to preserve eternal youth; including a short-lived method concocted by a misguided scientist in the 1920s of grafting ape testicles onto men with virility problems

• The year 2068 party where Gollner lingered with well-to-do immortalists including Aubrey De Grey – a prominent immortality theorist with dubious credentials.

• Ray Kurzweil, the techno-prophet who touts the theory of “the Singularity;” the digitization of memory and thought, and the reversal of aging through nanotechnologies

• The various ways in which the scientific community is studying aging and whether attaining immortality is actually achievable

• The industry of anti-aging; from pharmaceutical companies to resveratrol enthusiasts (the ingredient in red wine that has led many to tout its life-extending potential) to cryonic storage facilities that charge thousands of dollars to store cryonically frozen corpses

Rigorously reported and researched, THE BOOK OF IMMORTALITY is an expansive, intellectually hefty and frequently hilarious look at the mother of all existential issues. On the bookshelf it will sit comfortably alongside Mary Roach’s Gulp, Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, and Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?—non-fiction books that walk the perfect line between erudition and entertainment. THE BOOK OF IMMORTALITY offers further proof that Adam Leith Gollner is one of our most talented and passionate chroniclers of life’s cultural and scientific fringes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Adam Leith Gollner has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, and Lucky Peach. The former editor of Vice Magazine, his first book is The Fruit Hunters, which was recently adapted into a feature-length documentary film. He lives in Montreal.

For additional information or to schedule an interview with Adam Leith Gollner, contact
Leah Sikora / 212-698-2358 / Leah.Sikora@simonandschuster.com