Stephen E. Braude

As far as paranormal researchers go, Braude seems pretty legit - he's appropriately skeptical of fuzzy controls and not given to get swept away by a promising candidate, but he refuses to ignore the possibility of psi activity (and states flat out that he does believe in it, which is good insofar as knowing your biases is always good). I have to admit, this is the kind of book that makes me question my assumptions about reality. It's true that no one's ever produced total and conclusive proof of psi activity, but it's also true that those experiments are carried out under a cloud of general social disapproval. We don't criticize particle physicists for not being able to produce results without millions of dollars in time and equipment, after all. So I'm willing to grant Braude just as much as he's presenting - that there are some people who can do remarkable things that do not appear to have a non-psi explanation (or possibly that such remarkable things happen regularly around some people, if you want to take causation out of the equation entirely) but these effects are, for whatever reason, very small, and much smaller than effects that were recorded during the heyday of spiritualism in the Victorian Age.… (more)

The subject matter was intriguing, but the tone of the book was highly defensive. I got the impression that the author has had to spend a lot of his professional life justifying his interest in psychic phenomena to his academic colleagues, often without success.

The book was a strange mixture of things: case studies, both contemporary and historical; a philosophical discursion on the nature of synchronicity; and a rather odd chapter promoting the author's wife's skills in astrological predictions.

It had me scratching my head at times, but overall it was interesting enough to keep me reading and it raised some questions in my (admittedly highly cynical) mind about my previous assumptions in relation to paranormal affairs.… (more)

Recommended to those interested in parapsychology. The case with the gold leaf lady is mindboggling to say the least. Braude is a good writer, and this book takes you through some of the ups and downs of being a parapsychological investigator. Some hoaxes, some disturbed persons and a few genuinely intriguing cases. The book is well worth the price for the parts on The Ridiculous James Randi, who is shown to be a complete fraud, liar and hoaxer in his own right. How Randi can be seen as some kind of beacon of rationalism is to me beyond understanding. Anyhow, look forward to reading Braudes other works.… (more)