A useful but oddly uncritical summary.
An account of fin-de-siècle investigations into the murky worlds and weird works of mediums, mesmerists, rhabdomancers and spiritualists.
Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Blum (Science Journalism/Univ. of Wisconsin; Love at Goon Park, 2002, etc.) has done her homework; she seems to have read all the relevant correspondence and publications of the scientists and psychologists who, around the turn of the 20th century, tried to determine if there was scientific basis for spiritualism. Although her focus is on the redoubtable William James, she offers much about his colleagues in the ghost-busting business, including William Crookes, William Fletcher Barrett, Edward Gurney, Richard Hodgson, Fred Myers, Henry Sidgwick, James Hyslop and others. The author also focuses sharply on two women with apparent powers: the medium Leonora Piper and the Italian telekineticist Eusapia Palladino, who could make curtains billow and tables hang in the air. Blum excels at demonstrating how troubled James and his cohorts were by their investigations. In some cases, they simply could not find scientific explanations for the stories they were gathering, or for what some of them had witnessed. In her trances, Piper said things that astonished them; Palladino flummoxed more than one cocky skeptic. Blum also does a fine job of showing how the scientific community was embarrassed and angered by the fact that some of its most respected members were pursuing research into the paranormal. Perhaps the most extreme reaction came at Columbia University, where a group of professors demanded that Hyslop abandon psychical research. What’s largely missing here is the author’s perspective. Blum seems content to relate rather than to analyze; her text lacks analysis. She ends with the patent observation that the conflict between science and the supernatural endures.
A useful but oddly uncritical summary.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2006
ISBN: 1-59420-090-4
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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