A review by thiago
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

1.0

I endured Stapledon for two hours before giving up. Last and First Men reads like a history textbook: country A attacked country B, which retaliated, then they became allies and attacked country C, etc, all in a boring prose that miserably fails to engage the reader. Stapledon manages to be boring even when narrating the complete destruction of Europe by America in a big war. There is no real plot, no character development, no attempt to convince the reader that the story matters. To make things worse, the book is riddled with juvenile national stereotypes: "the Germans are harsh but romantic", "the Russians are not attached to material possessions", "the Americans are materialistic", and the like. Hard pass. If you're looking for an ambitious "future history" of mankind you're much better off with Asimov's Robot, Empire, and Foundation series (15 books in total, spanning 20 thousand years).