#49 Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

A book about first contact.. and last contact.  Benevolent overlords come to Earth just in tome to prevent us from destroying ourselves.  They teach us to live in peace, but some wonder if they have an ulterior motive.  Of course there is way more going on with the aliens than just a friendly greeting from the stars, but this book goes somewhere no other story has.  They wait for signs of Humanity growing out of it's childhood and help us to the next stage.  The end of the book with it's first person view of total loneliness and desolation; the feeling of accepting one's ultimate fate; the evaporation of.. everything.. was so well written it just left me with an odd, empty kind of feeling.