Douglas R. Hofstadter (author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid):
"GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"
This book is STILL my favorite. Now, many years after the first edition won a Pulitzer in 1979, it is still in print, and still in great demand.
