A famous reviewer said about this: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."

Indeed, it is an absolutely amazing read, one that will have you thinking -- Jaynes hypothesis is that what we conceive as *consciousness* (a tricky, nebulous concept in itself, as he details in early chapters) developed in humankind over past ~3K years and that prior, human beings were more like automatons, lacking consciousness as we reckon it and were governed by a "bicameral mind" -- with mental and/or behavior more akin to what we would term schizophrenic today.

Wut?

Sounds insane, but not until you start thinking about it. Jaynes covers human physiology that still contains remnants of this condition. In later chapters he looks at how language and writing precipitated the "breakdown of them bicameral mind" and this is evidence contained within ancient writings like the Iliad and the Hebrew Bible -- juxtaposing older texts against newer texts and noting the differences with this in mind.

Definitely landed in my reread pile -- checked out from the library but will be purchasing a hardcopy for certain.