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PARANORMAL

Name: PARANORMAL
Author: Raymond Moody
ISBN: 978-0-06-204642-0

MY LIFE IN PURSUIT OF THE AFTERLIFE

by Raymond Moody and Paul Perry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2012

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A lucid, engrossing memoir from a psychologist and philosopher dedicated to the afterlife.

If Moody’s (The Last Laugh, 1999, etc.) career capstone arrived with the lionizing 1975 publication of his landmark report Life after Life, his memoir, co-authored by Perry (co-author: Evidence of the Afterlife, 2010, etc.), an acclaimed author on the subject, affords his life’s work even more dramatic heft. Moody’s passion for the spiritual world can be traced to an early childhood in World War II–era Georgia raised by an abusively crass father and a depressed mother. He recalls at age 4 establishing theories about death and concepts of postmortem “soul survival.” Moody writes ardently of an interest in astronomy throughout adolescence, undeterred by a skeptical father and crippling myxedema, a thyroid deficiency. As a philosophy scholar, he became “hooked on death” and intensely explored spiritual phenomena, out-of-body sensations, near-death events and theories of mind-body coexistence. Plumbing an interest in “facilitated visions” via hypnotic past-life regression therapy, Moody details his nine former lives, including that of a threadbare wooly mammoth hunter, a drowning boat builder and a murdered female Chinese artist. He coined the term “near-death experience” as his first book soared in popularity; on the lecture circuit, he befriended fellow afterlife pioneer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Then his illness resurfaced, causing a suicide attempt and a stint at a psychiatric facility after his experimentations with spirit communication and crystallomancy were discovered by his closed-minded father. Now in his mid-60s, Moody continues his revolutionary research. The supernatural undertones saturating the narrative are dwarfed by an overwhelming sense that this eccentric visionary just might be on to something. The fascinating life story of an impassioned mystical maverick.

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-06-204642-0

Page Count: 256

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)