YMMV / Last and First Men

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The book was written by an Englishman in 1929-1930, when the notion of Germany as a peace-loving country was not uncommon. Also the notion of Britain and France going to war is more realistic when you realize that there were actually treaties written up that stated that if France attacked Germany, Britain would enter into the fray on Germany's side.
• Funny Moments: After describing how the Fourth Men create the genetically-perfect Fifth Men to be their servitor race, while also abusing them out of spiteful envy, the book basically says, "okay, we don't need to spend any time describing what obviously happened next, right? Okay, so let's pick up once the Fourth Men had gotten well and thoroughly exterminated..."
• Fair for Its Day: The constant obsession over national and especially racial characteristics (i.e. Americans are all overconfident and arrogant), simplistic cosmopolitanism, and promotion of eugenics. One chapter is particularly cringeworthy, first stereotyping Africans, and then Jews. However, although races and ethnicities among the First Men are often stereotyped, Stapledon always describes the particular positives and negatives of each national character. This dissonance also lessens considerably after the rise of the Patagonian civilization, favoring a kind of innate cosmopolitanism in humanity.
• Harsher in Hindsight: America's rather mindless pop culture has taken over much of the globe, Europe has been exhausted by wars and China is now the world's #2, a Russo-German war happened with Germany led by a man who wrote a crazy book considering Slavs subhumans, and Europe, exhausted by wars, has created a Union. And a dictator heavily implied to be Mussolini gets lynched after Italy loses a war. Probably the most painful: the condition that leads the First Men to retreat into Siberia before becoming the Second Men is worldwide climate change.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact that it takes millions of years and the rise and fall of several civilizations for humans to achieve space travel.
  • "But communism was alien to China...."
• Tear Jerker: Our last look at the Last Men. Their civilisation is coming apart at the seams, with most of their attempt to Fling a Light into the Future still left undone. Worst of all, their minds have deteriorated to the point where they can no longer grasp the greater universal purpose that gave them some comfort before. They can still remember that there was something that made extinction seem bearable, but they can no longer recall what it was, and are forced to question whether it was ever real at all or just a delusion.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Fifth Men wiping out the Venerians is treated by the narrative as a Necessarily Evil and tries to paint it as a Mercy Kill (since, according to the narrator, the Venerians were going to run out radioactive material to feed on). A lot of people sympathized with the Venerians and viewed the Fifth Men as genocidal invaders. Note, this is not Values Dissonance since people even at the time complained. This even inspired C. S. Lewis to write Out of the Silent Planet as a Spiritual Antithesis to First and Last Men.
• Values Resonance: While cultures are described very stereotypically, it's constantly stressed that this means that they have much to learn from each other, since each have strengths that can offset the other's weaknesses, if only they'd have the humility to let them. Even after the last of the modern-day cultures have vanished, diversity of thought is always described as a virtue, and conformity as a trap.