Join authors Julia Buss and David Millett on a comical jaunt through some of the big questions in life. Using rhyme and illustrations they explore some of the ideas we hold dearest. Come take the ride with Tricky Nick Trickadee and his faithful dog Lucretius, if you dare.

Two massive and ruthless companies, the Dane Corporation and Norge Industries, are at war. The head of the Dane Corporation, President and CEO Hamlet Dane has died unexpectedly. His brother Claud Dane has taken control of the company and married his brother’s wife. Hamlet’s daughter Femlet Dane was being groomed by her father to become the CEO of the company, but her uncle has other plans. An inward morose woman everyone assumed this was just the way she was, but she has a dark secret. She is devastated at the unexpected death of her beloved father and incensed over her mother’s marriage to her uncle. Her hatred turns into rage and she slowly descends into madness.

If we are unable to limit, in a humane and intelligent way, the world’s human populations we will not escape our history of growth and collapse. And the next collapse will be like no other. It will not be restricted to the remote Easter Island. It will not give us the chance to expand to another area as with the collapse of the Samarian civilization. The next collapse will be a worldwide one, epic in proportion, and perhaps the final one for the human race. However, if some of us do make it through this global downfall what will our descendants find in the geological record. Surely they will discover that the Anthropocene was a time of human dominance of the world, a time where humans held all the cards, a time when we could have stopped the cycle of growth and collapse, but a time that proved the human species was not intelligent enough to do so. Perhaps, in the future our descendants will look back at the Anthropocene and rename it from: “the age of man” to: “the age of very, very, stupid men”.

The human condition is fraught with ambiguity and plagued by uncertainty. We can’t always know ourselves and what we might do in any given circumstance, even though we might like to think otherwise. Therefore, we highly value the concept of truth as it is reassuring to feel that there is some kind of certainty in our world. If only we can find, define, and hold onto this elusive truth then we can soothe our psyches with the balm of truth, and thereby delude ourselves with feelings of certainty. It is not easy to think that truth may be an outdated concept, or indeed a concept with very little utility, except perhaps in the realm of fairy tales and fantasy. In our lives we can only see shadows on the wall of the human cave. We need to keep in mind these shadows are only built from our personal experiences, our culture, and our perception. Defining truth is like trying to hit a moving target. If some idea becomes a so-called truth at some point, can it be an eternal truth? Are some truths immutable, or is this possibility mere wishful thinking? Is there a moment in time when circumstances allow a truth to be possible or to really be true? Then if that moment in time passes does the particular truth lose its relevance or use? Often traditional truths are the most powerful in our cultures, and are continually passed down through the generations. These types of truth gain immense hold over our lives and appear to gain extra power over us merely from their ancient lineage, regardless of their sense or nonsense. Is it possible to have different versions of truth? Is a truth necessarily subjective and relative to situation? How much does truth matter to us, and in what ways does it control our decisions, even our lives. Does the concept of truth promote the accumulation of knowledge or hinder it? This is a smart and insightful book that asks many such questions. It examines “truth” and questions assumptions about the idea of truth. It puts “truth” under close scrutiny and comes up with a useful tool for examining one’s own, and society’s assumed truths. Dr. Julia Buss, 2016.