Books...
The
Anomalist Book Awards
&
Book List 2003
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Before I
begin, I'd just like to mention that the books
above were not considered for the Anomalist Book Awards for this year
because of my role in either writing or editing them. As the years
pass, and the more books like these I'm in some way responsible for,
the more
difficult
it becomes to hand out these awards. However, I will continue do so in
an effort to encourage other publishers to seek out and publish
books of interest to anomalists. And because of the help of some
Anomalist staffers in the award selection process this year, a couple
of
other excellent books had to be eliminated from the running. Both
Loren Coleman (LC) and Richard Hendricks (RDH) had a
hand in Linda Godfrey's delightful The
Beast of Bray Road, and Richard
Hendricks was a contributor to Brad Steiger's truly well done Real
Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places.
Is there
anything left, you wonder? You bet. Here are five we think
are worth your special attention.--Patrick Huyghe (PH)
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Award Winners
2003
BEST BIOGRAPHY
(UFOs)
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Firestorm:
Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science
by Ann
Druffel
James McDonald was a highly respected atmospheric physicist who
developed an interest in UFOs after a personal sighting in
1954.
By the later half of the 1960s he was up to his eyeballs in the UFO
swamp, but his
brilliant scientific mind saw through the muck to the hard scientific
data that science was ignoring. McDonald found many of the sighting
"solutions" offered by the Air Force absurd, but his efforts to work
with Project Bluebook fell on deaf ears. To everyone's surprise, he
reserved his greatest venom for his weak willed scientific colleagues
for not taking the phenomenon seriously, or not speaking out about it
openly when they did. When McDonald finally went public on UFOs, he
used his
prestige and well placed connections both in science and government to
have the phenomenon recognized, only to have his own reputation
tarnished.
Unfortunately, he was undermined by the
stresses and tragedies of this personal life, and ended up killing
himself in the Arizona desert in 1971. Ann Druffel is to be
commended for taking on this difficult subject, though the biography is
not without faults. There is too much of Druffel's own personal baggage
showing--her speculations on MJ-12, which have no place in this
biography--and not enough context--McDonald's orthodox scientific
research during which he carried out his UFO crusade--which does. If I
had to put my money on UFOs based solely on one man's probing of the
subject, McDonald's work would be it. For McDonald, the reality of
UFOs was not an opinion, but a scientific fact. Not surprisingly, his
intense 14-year effort for UFO recognition came to naught in this sadly
apathetic world. And all that remains in the end is this. Druffel's
riveting account is a proud monument to a truly courageous scientific
mind. --PH
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BEST
WORK
IN CRYPTOZOOLOGY
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The
Kraken and the Colossal Octopus
by
Bernard Heuvelmans
Finally! We have waited 35 years for this, the English translation of
one of the classic works of cryptozoology Le
Kraken et le Poulpe
Colossal (Paris: Plon, 1958).
But it's more than that. It is clear
from reading the book carefully, and noting the end dates used by the
author in signing the book, that he wrote and revised this opus in
1954-1957, 1974, and 1994. The 140 photographs and illustrations,
poorly printed unfortunately, include modern material as well (such as
the Plum Island giant squid and one of cryptozoologist Michel Raynal
with a model of the Giant Octopus). The
Kraken and the Colossal
Octopus is comprehensive,
grounded, fundamental to an understanding
of future discoveries, and remarkably entertaining. Bernard Heuvelmans
was a clever wordsmith, and despite the wealth of material on his
subject (mainly the giant squid and the as yet scientifically
unrecognized Giant Octopus), he does a superb job in giving the
seasoned cryptozoologist or the general reader an all-encompassing
chronicle of these remarkable beasts of the sea. Aside from its
shameful lack of an index and high price ($145), we applaud this
332-page landmark volume from the "father of cryptozoology," who died
in France at the age of 84 in August of 2001.--LC
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BEST HISTORY
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A
Secret History of Consciousness
by Gary
Lachman
Gary Lachman (aka Gary
Valentine author of New
Yorker Rocker)
seems to have left behind his
rock music roots and ventured deeply into intellectual history, first
with Turn
Off Your Mind,
an entertaining look back at the dark
side of the sixties, and now with this unorthodox history and
science of consciousness. Lachman finds the attempt by science to
explain consciousness in terms of atoms and molecules and the
physical laws that govern them both misguided and unfounded.
From
there he sets off on a white-knuckle intellectual adventure presenting
the views of a gamut of "alternative thinkers" on human consicousness,
philosophers, scientists, and occultists, ranging from Friedrich
Nietzsche, William James and Henri Bergson, to Jullian Jaynes, Andreas
Mavromatis, and Stan Gooch, as well as Madame Blavatsky, Colin Wilson,
Rudolf Steiner, P. D. Ouspensky and Jean Gebser. If some of these names
are not familiar to you, you're in for a treat. If you found
some
of their works oblique and heavy going, Lachman provides a masterful
synthesis of their ideas without being superficial. Standing atop so
many distinguished shoulders, Lachman argues persuasively
that consciousness not only shapes what's inside our heads, but the
outside world we perceive as well. What he ends up discussing at great
length is the evolution of consciousness, from the group mind of our
forebearers to our current individual analytical consciousness that
"granulates" the world into separate units of experience. Speculation
about the next step in this evolution of consciousness culminates
Lachman's heady stew.--PH
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BEST SCIENCE
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Sync:
The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
by Steven
Strogatz
Why do thousands of
fireflies flash in silent, hypnotic unison along the tidal rivers of
Malaysia every night? Why do traffic jams occur even when there's
no accident or other apparent cause? Why do women roommates sometimes
find their menstrual periods in sync? What caused hundreds of Japanese
children to fall into seizures while watching an episode of Pokemon?
What triggers riots, fads, and mass hysteria? Why do pendulum
clocks--inanimate objects!--swing in unison when they are within a
certain distance of each other? All of these astonishing feats of
synchrony occur(ed) spontaneously. Does the universe have a
tendency to synchronize; does it have an overwhelming desire for order?
You wouldn't think so given the laws of thermodynamics, which suggest
that the opposite is true--that nature tends toward increasing
disorder. Yet the universe is full of structures--galaxies, cells,
ecosystems, and humans beings--that have managed to assemble themselves
and behave in sync. "This enigma," notes author Steven
Strogatz,
a Cornell University mathematician, "bedevils all of science today." In
a compelling, often personal account, Strogatz explores the new science
of synchrony (not to be confused with synchronicity), which brings
mathematics, physics and biology to bear on the mystery of how
spontaneous order occurs at every level of the cosmos, from the nucleus
on up to the universe. But what does it all mean? Not even Strogatz
ventures to answer the question. Terms such as spontaneity,
synchrony, and complexity may be familiar to us, but the nature and
extent of their scientific causes as well as interrelationships and
interdependence, have yet to be fully revealed. In other words, a
science book for anomalists.--PH
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BEST GHOST STUDY
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Possessions:
The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley
by Judith
Richardson
Judith
Richardson’s Possessions
is a refreshing break from the typical
(American) ghost
book. Ghostly tomes generally come in three
flavors.
Vignettes of local legends and personal encounters. Feel good
affirmations offering proof of survival of the soul after
death.
How-to books aimed at the burgeoning amateur ghost hunter
market.
Allowing for name and place variants, most read remarkably the
same. Competent, but plodding the same old spirit
path.
Richardson examines the cultural context of ghost stories and what
these stories reveal about the inhabitants of a specific
landscape. In particular, she focuses on the Hudson Valley in
New
York state, showing how the complex dance of place, aesthetics,
artists, cultural traditions, romance-seeking tourists, and diverse
populations mutates folkloric specters over time to reflect
contemporary concerns. Here, Washington Irving’s
Headless
Horseman rubs up against the likes of the metamorphic career of the
horse-dragged female ghost of Leeds and the apparitions that haunt T.
Coraghessan Boyle’s contemporary novel World’s
End. Possessions
began life as a dissertation, and may put off the casual reader with
its lingering hints of academi-speak and emphasis on
literature.
But for the reader looking for something meatier than the frisson of
rattling chains or scrutinizing orbs for facial features on poor
quality snapshots, Richardson enlarges our understanding of how ghosts
possess our imaginations. Ghost tales aren’t
static; parts are
retained, some lost, others unconsciously altered to fit the current
zeitgeist. It’s not a new concept, but one often
ignored.--RDH
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Critics
& Debunkers
A
Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
by Michael Barkun
Hoaxes,
Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking
by Robert E. Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford
The
Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing
Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions
by Robert Todd Carroll
Are
Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic
Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and
Pseudoscientific Topics
by Martin Gardner
Necronomicon
Files: The Truth Behind the Legend
by Daniel Harms, John Wisdom, III Gonce, John Wisdom Gonce III
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal
by Terence
Hines
Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the
Border Between
Science and Spirituality
by John Horgan
Moon
Landings: Did NASA Lie?
Philippe Lheureux
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the
Hysteria
by Scott Maruna
Secrets
of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims
by Massimo Polidoro
The
Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda
by Amy Wallace
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Strange
Talents
Distant
Mental Influence: Its Contributions to Science, Healing, and Human
Interactions
by William Braud
The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote
Viewing as Told by a
"Psychic Spy" for the U.S. Military
by Lyn Buchanan
The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Obsession,
Perfume, and the
Last Mystery of the Senses
by Chandler Burr
Magic,
Mystery, and Science: The Occult in Western Civilization
by Dan Burton and David Grandy
Nostradamus and the Lost Templar Legacy
by Rudy Cambier
Diary of a Psychic
Sonia Choquette
Magic
and Witchcraft: From Shamanism to the Technopagans
by Nevill Drury
The
Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema
by Lon Milo Duquette
Confessions
of a Psychic and a Rabbi
by Uri Geller and Shmuley Boteach
The
Phaselock Code : Through Time, Death and Reality, The Metaphysical
Adventures of the Man Who Fell Off Everest
by Roger Hart
Born Knowing: A Medium's Journey-Accepting
and Embracing My
Spiritual Gifts
by John Holland, Cindy Pearlman
Dream
Telepathy: Scientific Experiments in the Supernatural
by Stanley Krippner, Montague
Ullman and Alan
Vaughan
A
Secret History of Consciousness
by Gary Lachman
Turn
Off Your Mind
by Gary Lachman
The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist:
Toward a General
Theory of the Paranormal
by Lawrence L. Leshan
The
Last Alchemist : Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason
by Iain McCalman
Shamanic Experience: A Practical Guide to
Psychic Powers
by Kenneth Meadows
Twin Telepathy: The Psychic Connection
by Guy Lyon Playfair
The
H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P
by David Ritchey
The Sense of Being Stared at: And Other
Aspects of the
Extended Mind
by Rupert Sheldrake
The Crystal Children: A Guide to the Newest
Generation of
Psychic and Sensitive Children
by Doreen Virtu
Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing
Your Life, the Four
Essential Principles
by Richard Wiseman |
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The Anomalist, PO Box 6807, Charlottesville, VA 22906
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