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SECRET LIFE

Name: SECRET LIFE
Author: David M. Jacobs
ISBN: 0-671-74857-2

FIRST-HAND ACCOUNTS OF UFO ABDUCTIONS

by David M. Jacobs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 1992

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Next time you glance at your watch and find a few minutes missing, better rush to your local hypnotist—you, too, might have been unwittingly kidnapped by a UFO. So Jacobs seems to suggest, estimating that over a million Americans have been abducted in recent years. ``We have been invaded,'' he proclaims, warning that ``the aliens have powers and technology greatly in advance of ours.'' Odd words, coming from a professor of history at Temple Univ., and a sign of the extreme oddity of the phenomenon, which Jacobs explores through extensive structural analysis. Each stage of a typical abduction, including the most sensational—the sexual encounters and reproductive experiments found in nearly all cases—are scrutinized through firsthand transcripts of hypnotic-regression interviews with more than 60 victims. The conclusion? That aliens are impregnating earth women in order to create quasi-human ``hybrids'' for some unknown purpose. The mind reels, but the sober, obviously terrified abductees make a strong case for the veracity of their experience. Jacobs's own presentation is a mixed blessing: His scholarship is punctilious, but he reveals the zeal of the converted in his debunking, after slight analysis, of all earth-bound explanations for UFO abductions (hysterical contagion, psychogenic fugue states, temporal-lobe dysfunction, and the like). By bringing solid scholarship to the pioneering efforts of Bud Hopkins and the hot prose of Whitley Strieber, this marks the next stage in UFO abduction research—and is just as likely to fly off the supermarket bookracks.

Pub Date: March 12, 1992

ISBN: 0-671-74857-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992

Categories:

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT

- BOOK REVIEW
UFOS AND ABDUCTIONS
edited by David M. Jacobs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE THREAT
by David M. Jacobs

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EXPLORING THE LABYRINTH

A GUIDE FOR HEALING AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

by Melissa Gayle West ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000

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EXPLORING THE LABYRINTHA Guide for Healing and Spiritual GrowthWest, Melissa Gayle

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-7679-0356-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Broadway

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999

Categories:

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | SELF-HELP

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BEHIND THE CRYSTAL BALL

MAGIC AND SCIENCE FROM ANTIQUITY THROUGH THE NEW AGE

by Anthony Aveni ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1996

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For an anthropologist and astronomer, Aveni (Conversing with the Planets, 1992, etc.) displays an encouraging though sometimes excessive openness of mind about things magical in this dash through the history of Western mysticism and hokum, from the Gnostics to the alchemists to the New Age. While he recognizes the many benign uses of magic—as religion, as ritual, as epistemology—Aveni is also far too accepting of the innumerable abuses. Pulling the usual flea-bitten rhetorical rabbits out of his hat (science is limited, magic is nonempirical, etc.), he clumsily seeks to excuse all manner of mountebanks and charlatans: ``When we compare magic's by-laws to those of science, it becomes very clear why the two constitute ways of knowing that are totally at odds with one another concerning both what knowledge is valid and how that knowledge gets passed on.'' Yet as Aveni acknowledges, the two have sometimes become entwined. Further, he believes that as science supposedly becomes less rational (cf. quantum mechanics), it will once again meld with magic. Interestingly, while science changes constantly, magic has altered very little over the centuries, with old beliefs constantly ``being rediscovered and dressed up in brand-new clothing.'' Though Aveni's erudition is impressively vast, he doesn't know when to rein it in, as he hies off after even the most obscure flummeries. Yet he manages to slight both non-Western magic and the history of science. In short, this is one of those works that seem both too long and too incomplete. Certainly, it is far removed from the benchmark history of mysticism, Charles Mackay's entertaining 19th- century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Still, saw this book in half, suspend some of Aveni's credulity, and presto chango, you just might conjure up a highly readable book. (illustrations, not seen)