Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Surreal yet all too close to the truth...
Comment: Vonnegut's novel takes the reader into the myriad faces of human emotions--from disenchantment to awe, skepticism to empathy, from horror and madness to succor and redemption. This dryly humorous and unforgivingly scathing story of the seemingly inevitable tendency of humans to think up of ways to destroy themselves, or, simply, to make complete wretches of their lives, is at times too incredulous to be taken seriously, and yet the author has managed to slip in some amazingly straightforward insights people nowadays would probably hardly acknowledge readily, too preoccupied we are with the superfluous things in life.
I certainly enjoyed Cat's Cradle with its memorable zany characters, unashamed views on tolerance, hypocrisy, and even religion. It takes a jab at the senselessness of war, the farcical stage that is politics, and ponders the possibility that life can be lived so simply but it seems that that idea for us nowadays is too complex to grasp.
Makes the reader sit back and think while still helplessly embroiled in the world of "Bokononism" and the twists and turns of fate the narrator was dealt with. A veritable tour de force.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Still relevant to this day
Comment: A free-lance journalist, researching material for his book: The Day the World Ended, tracks down the family of the father of the atom bomb. His quest takes him to a banana republic where he meets the love of his life and magically becomes El Presidente. But he gets more than he asked for when he comes face-to-face with Ice-Nine.
Vonnegut, who witnessed the horror of the Dresden fire-bombing, takes us on a light-hearted romp through the madness of mankind. He challenges us with wry humor, zany characters and a half-baked religion. Do we really know or do we only think we know?
Cat's Cradle has become ever more relevant over the years.
Customer Rating: Summary: The master of Cat's Cradle
Comment: The cat's cradle is an extraordinary tale about the extent of human limitations when incompatibilities exist between the goals of science and humanity. Vonnegut created another masterpiece that describes the dangers of human science when mixed with their desires and lewdness.
John, the narrator, is writing a book about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and in the process of his research discovers the life of Felix Hoenikker, the Nobel prize-winning physicist and one of the creators of the atomic bomb.
Similar to walking through a hilarious human maze, we are taken to San Lorenzo; a town were Hoenikker's two sons and daughter live and ignorantly use their father's last invention causing another world wide human disaster.
Vonnegut brilliantly shows human limitations and foolishness with his description of an imaginary religion called Bokononism, which originated and blossomed in San Lorenzo.
Vonnegut, who survived the cruelty of war and faced life's emptiness, is one of the few writers who can laugh at the human inability to reconcile the inherent conflict of science's power and capabilities with the needs and limitations of humanity.
