What some very nice readers have said so far:
“Bering has written a brave, surprising, and deeply compelling book. What begins as a skeptic’s attempt to ‘explain away’ belief in an afterlife becomes something far more interesting: a witty, clear-eyed, and beautifully told examination of Ian Stevenson, the psychiatrist whose investigations into reincarnation and other anomalies remain some of the most enigmatic in modern science. A fascinating and wonderfully humane read.”—Paul Bloom, author of Psych: The Story of the Human Mind
“The most enjoyable, informative, and surprising book I’ve read in a very long time. I was vaguely aware of Stevenson’s research into reincarnation, but Bering’s elegant and witty writing helped me see that research in the context of Dr. Stevenson’s profoundly unusual, brilliant mind. Rarely has the relationship between the discoverer and his discoveries been explored with such insight, understanding, and indeed, grace.”—Christopher Ryan, author of Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress
“Here is a balanced biography of Ian Stevenson that is sensitive to our twentieth-first century concerns as it connects the psychiatrist’s humanity to his many books and ideas, including his early psychedelic studies and his final speculations on birthmarks and the ‘psychophore’ of the reincarnating soul. In these pages, the reader encounters both a humane fairness and a potential ontological shock.”—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else
“Through Ian Stevenson’s life, Bering deftly examines the ignored and mocked corners of the behavioral sciences. Never dismissive and never credulous, Bering shows how parapsychology—ESP, survival, reincarnation—walked the same academic corridors as psychology and psychiatry. Bering’s clever biography shows that what’s been marginalized deserves a place in the light. A revealing tale, and a fun one.”—Joshua Blu Buhs, author of Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers
“This deeply researched and engagingly written biography does much more than tell the story of Ian Stevenson’s life and work on children with past-life memories, mediumship, apparitions, and extrasensory perception—it is a meditation on the implications of Stevenson’s findings for the relation of mind to body and the survival of consciousness after bodily death. Bering’s account is especially powerful because he comes to Stevenson from the perspective of cognitive psychology. It should inspire others who think they know what Stevenson was about, but have not read anything he wrote, to take up his extensive writings and form their own opinions about them.”—James G. Matlock, author of Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory