Biographers Day

Today is Biographers Day, commemorating the day biographer James Boswell met his subject, Samuel Johnson, in a bookshop in 1763. (See Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship.) Do you often think about the biographer rather than their subject when checking out a book? Have you ever read the biography because you know the biographer is a good writer? 

We've enjoyed biographies by Peter Ackroyd, Robert Caro, Donald Spoto, Diane Middlebrook, Stephen Ambrose, Stacy Schiff, David McCullough, Nancy Milford, Claire Tomalin, Caroline Moorehead, Lytton Strachey, A. N. Wilson, Brenda Maddox, Antonia Fraser, Lee Server, Amanda Foreman, Alison Weir, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Peter Guralnick. We've put together a list of some of the library's more recent acquisitions below - is there a biographer or biography you'd like to recommend? Let us know in the comments!

Manderley For Ever by Tatiana de Rosnay

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King

Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971 by Leigh Montville 

Dinner With Dimaggio: Memories of an American Hero by Dr. Rock Positano and John Positano 

Ernest Hemingway by Mary V. Dearborn

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rudiger Safranski  

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Mockingbird Songs: Harper Lee - A Friendship by Wayne Flynt 

Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal Heroine by Angela Thirlwell 

Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire - A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall 

Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty - An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother by Kate Hennessy 

The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon 

Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell

Wrapped in Rainbows: The life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince by Ben Greenman 

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims

Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe

The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller

From Cradle to Stage: Stories From the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars by Virginia Hanlon Grohl 

Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White 

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry

Charlton Heston: Hollywood's Last Icon by Marc Eliot

Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann 

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell 

Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching For James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride 


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 Links

The 20 Best Biographies and Autobiographies of All Time [Telegraph] 

25 Recommendations For Life Changing Biographies For the Voracious Reader In You [Thought Catalog]

11 Must-Read Biographies About Incredible Women [HuffPost]

15 Best Autobiographies Everyone Should Read at Least Once In Their Life [Lifehack]

Best Biographies [Goodreads]

New & Novel: Author Biographies

You think you know the story so well. It’s a mansion inside your head, each room just waiting to be described, but pretty much every memoirist I’ve ever talked to finds the walls of such rooms changing shape around her. There are shattering earthquakes, tectonic-plate-type shifts. Or it’s like memory is a snow globe that invariably gets shaken so as to shroud the events inside.
~Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

We confess to a deep curiosity into the lives of the authors we read. How do they do it? What are their lives like? Coupled with our current reading material, Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir, this curiosity fuels our latest booklist. Mary Karr has so many wise and wonderful quotes about great memoirs - of which her splendid best-selling The Liars' Club is one of our favorite example of the genre - that we wish we could just list them here and call it a day. However, as Karr herself might admonish us, good blogging, like good memoirs, should be "art, a made thing. It’s not just raw reportage flung splat on the page."

While we can't promise all the memoirs and biographies listed - there's a healthy crop of them out at the moment - meet Mary Karr's high standards of being "held together by happenstance, theme, and (most powerfully) the sheer, convincing poetry of a single person trying to make sense of the past," we hope there are a few to pique your interest. We elected to include a few biographies amongst the memoirs because we found the subject matter so interesting.

Without further ado (or Mary Karr quotes), here's a list of some of the newest memoirs and biographies of authors in the library catalog - from an author who moved to another country and wrote her memoir in a new language to a friend's memories of the late, great Nora Ephron to a daughter writing about life as the child of a graphic novelist and the art director of the New Yorker, there's an embarrassment of riches waiting for your perusal!

Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author by Herman Wouk

About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter by Lisa Alther and Françoise Gilot

B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal by J. C. Hallman

Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir - With the Lost Photographs of David Attie by Truman Capote

Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life by John Le Carre

Please Enjoy Your Happiness: A Memoir by Paul Brinkley-Rogers

The Lights of Pointe-Noire: A Memoir by Alain Mabanckou

She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron by Richard Cohen

You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin by Rachel Corbett

I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This: A Memoir by Nadja Spiegelman

Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld

The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction by Tama Janowitz

Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists On Why They Expose Themselves (And Others) In the Name of Literature edited by Meredith Maran 
 

   

Science Corner: Marie Curie

...Marie Curie was never easy to understand or categorize. That was because she was a pioneer, an outlier, unique for the newness and immensity of her achievements. But it was also because of her sex. Curie worked during a great age of innovation, but proper women of her time were thought to be too sentimental to perform objective science. She would forever be considered a bit strange, not just a great scientist but a great woman scientist... Professional science until fairly recently was a man’s world, and in Curie’s time it was rare for a woman even to participate in academic physics, never mind triumph over it.

~Julie Des Jardins, "Madame Curie's Passion" (Smithsonian Magazine, October 2011)

2011 marked a century since Marie Curie won her second Nobel Prize - she won the first in 1903, in Physics (shared with her husband, Pierre, and Professor Henri Becquerel), for research on the "radiation phenomena" and her 1911 prize was in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".

This year marks the fifth time a married couple has won a Nobel Prize (in this case May-Britt and Edvard Moser in Physiology or Medicine) and the fourth time the couple has shared a prize. Marie and Pierre Curie were the first couple, followed in 1935 by their daughter, Iréne Joliot-Curie, and her husband, Frédéric Joliot, who also won in Chemistry. Marie and Iréne were the first women to win Nobel Prizes.

Today marks the 147th birth anniversary of Marie Curie, who was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867. Although she soared academically, she was not allowed to attend university, which was men-only.  To continue her education past secondary school, she had to attend underground classes. Marie Curie worked as a tutor and governess for 5 years, studying physics, chemistry, and math in her spare time, until, in 1891, she had saved enough to go to Paris and attend the Sorbonne  By 1894, aged 27, she had advanced degrees in chemistry and mathematics. The same year, she met Pierre Curie, and they married in 1895. Their daughter, Iréne, was born in 1897.  By this time, husband and wife were working together, and they discovered polonium in 1898. A second child, Eve, was born in 1903. Pierre Curie died in an accident in 1906 and she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming its first female professor.

Marie Curie won many awards (including some posthumously) and was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay, a conference to support and discuss scientific research - their first invitation-only congress was attended by herself, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein. During WWI, she promoted the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and for that they were nicknamed "Little Curies". She never lost her enthusiasm for science, but her exposure to radioactivity cut her life short.  Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, aged 67.

Want to learn more?  Check out these books from the catalog:


Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science's First Family by Shelley Emling

Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

The Curies: A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science by Denis Brian

Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith


Links

Marie Curie [Biography]

Marie Curie and the History of Radioactivity [Science Museum]

Marie Curie's century-old radioactive notebook still requires a lead box [Gizmodo]

Marriage a Nobel tradition for prize winners  [RTE]

New & Novel: Music Biographies

There have been a spate of new musicians' biographies and memoirs in the library catalog recently!  Whether you prefer soul, rock, R&B, gospel, Celtic punk, or jazz, you'll find someone to read about.

Bowie: The Biography by Wendy Leigh

Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol

27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse by Howard Sounes

Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s by Tom Doyle

Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities by Herbie Hancock with Lisa Dickey

Cold Sweat: My Father James Brown and Me by Yamma Brown with Robin Gaby Fisher

Living Like a Runaway: A Memoir by Lita Ford

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg, Jerry Lee Lewis

On the Road with Janis Joplin by John Byrne Cooke

Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana

I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway by Greg Kot

Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life and Cars by Neil Young

Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues by James Fearnley

Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith by Joe Perry with David Ritz

Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein

If you enjoy reading books about music and/or musicians, try other books by Greg Kot, Peter Guralnick, Simon Reynolds, Alex Ross, Rob Sheffield, Greil Marcus, Elijah Wald, Ben Ratliff, Steve Turner, Nadine Cohodas, Ethan Mordden, Ken Emerson, Jean A. Boyd, and Ted Gioia.

Hollywood's Golden Age

A lot of celebrities have passed away recently...Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, Sir Richard Attenborough, Don Pardo, Elaine Stritch, to name but a few.  The deaths of James Garner and Lauren Bacall, though, set us on a nostalgia kick for the Golden Age of Hollywood, leading us to compile this book list from the library catalog about some of Tinseltown's biggest stars and including a few tomes about the era itself.  Did we miss anyone?  Let us know in the comments!

By Myself and Then Some by Lauren Bacall

Ava Gardner: "Love is Nothing" by Lee Server

Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck : Steel-True 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson

Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner

The Garner Files: A Memoir by James Garner

You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood's Golden Age by Robert J. Wagner with Scott Eyman

Becoming Mae West by Emily Wortis Leider

Robert Mitchum: "Baby, I Don't Care" by Lee Server

Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson

Fifth Avenue, 5 AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman by Sam Wasson

Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford by Donald Spoto

Steve McQueen: A Biography by Marc Eliot [eBook]

Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes

Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando by Stefan Kanfer

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan 

Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis

The Golden Girls of MGM : Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others by Jane Ellen Wayne

Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart by Stefan Kanfer

Rita Moreno: A Memoir by Rita Moreno

Thank Heaven: A Memoir by Leslie Caron

The Million Dollar Mermaid by Esther Williams with Digby Diehl

Unsinkable: A Memoir by Debbie Reynolds and Dorian Hannaway

Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot

The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda by Devin McKinney

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris


Links

Behind the scenes of Hollywood with Bob Willoughby - in pictures  

Survivor Memoirs

Some people seem to have the ability to survive and, sometimes, flourish, after having experienced dark extremes of behaviors and circumstances - drug addiction, abuse, crime, loss. We read their memoirs to understand their journeys and to perhaps find light at the end of the tunnel, or at least to know that survival is possible after such terrible experiences. Many people have read Dave Pelzer's memoir A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive - seems as though there are always holds on it.  Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, Lucky by Alice Sebold, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff and Mary Karr's The Liar's Club and Cherry have also been very popular accounts of surviving adverse circumstances.  Here are a couple of the latest survivor memoirs in our catalog:

Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani

Relates the author's life with her identical twin sister, Cara, the downward spiral due to depression and drugs that resulted Cara's early death, and the author's determination to defy the odds that she herself would die within two years of her twin.

 

 

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

A memoir of the author's experiences as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that killed her parents, husband, and two young sons recounts her struggles with profound grief and survivor's guilt and her gradual steps toward healing.


For more memoirs of survival, take at look at the Overcoming Adversity booklist on our Booklist for Adults subject guide.

Diaries and Memoirs

If you have ever wanted to snoop through a loved one's diary....resist that impulse and read someone else's instead. Your local library is a treasure trove of diaries, journals and memoirs that will let you dig deep into the recesses of someone's soul without dire personal repercussions.

Fictitious Diaries

The Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend delves not only into the angst-ridden life and hopes of Adrian from age 13 to 45, but also into the growing pains of Great Britain from the early 1980's to present day confounding, austere realities. A complex cast of characters perseveres through family dysfunction, political turmoil, wars, and economic difficulties with sometimes unintentional wit and humor.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 & 3/4

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.

Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction
 

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

Additional fictitious memoirs and diaries in our collection include:

Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart by William Boyd

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Diary: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell

For non-fiction lovers, we offer a wide variety of diaries, journals, and memoirs from some fascinating people. Author Anais Nin (1903-1977)  kept diaries for 60 years, from the age of 11 until shortly before her death in 1977. In addition to her diaries, she wrote novellas, short stories, and erotica, such as Little Birds and Delta of Venus.

Notable Nin diary compilations from our library collection include:

Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin

Fire from "A Journal of Love" : The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934-1937 [eBook]

Nearer the Moon : From A Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1937-1939

If you have ever wondered about how introverted bookworms end up working with the public, two librarians' memoirs will give you behind the scenes access. Quiet, Please: Dispatches From a Public Librarian by Scott Douglas and Free For All : Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas In the Public Library by Don Borchert are highly recommended.

There is an abundance of off beat memoirs to choose from including:

Let's Pretend This Never Happened : (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson

Hypocrite In a Pouffy White Dress : Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless by Susan Jane Gilman

My Horizontal Life : A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler

My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir by Carl Reiner

Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir by Nicole J. Georges

Stirring It Up With Molly Ivins: A Memoir With Recipes by Ellen Sweets

Two modern American artists, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Keith Haring (1958-1990) wrote journals that have contributed so much to understanding their visual masterpieces. Warhol's tome: The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett is an occasionally tedious catalog of his daily expenses, social life, and work, that is intermingled with scintillating tidbits about his famous friends, from Jean-Michael Basquiat to Truman Capote. You will feel like a privileged best friend and a glamorous insider if you make it through all 807 pages, which was whittled down from 20,000 original pages.

Keith Haring's premature and tragic death from AIDS in 1990 robbed the world of an open-hearted street artist and social activist. The Keith Haring Journals are an artistic and personal journey that allows readers to journey with Haring from his promising, adventurous youth to great artistic achievements, to the American front lines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980's.

One of history's most moving diarists is of course Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945). Her wartime diary has been translated into 67 languages and sold over 30 million copies. The Diary of Anne Frank : The Critical Edition is an especially fascinating edition to explore, because it contains two versions of the diary, along with the version edited by her father Otto Frank.

Otto Frank, the sole survivor and caretaker of his daughter's legacy, was a fascinating man in his own right. Carol Ann Lee's biography The Hidden Life of Otto Frank is a haunting portrait of a sensitive, cultured man and devoted husband and father who recognized his daughter Anne's universal message of hope and resilience. Lee is not afraid to also consider Otto Frank's few flaws and motives for secularizing the diary, and even in some instances slicing out unflattering passages regarding Anne's mother. Lee also constructs an excellent theory about who betrayed the Frank family and their friends to the Gestapo.

Miep Gies, the Frank's humble and heroic protector also wrote a memoir about her experiences with co-author Alison Leslie Gold. Anne Frank Remembered : The Story of the Woman Who Helped To Hide the Frank Family is a deeply moving memoir that details the complexities and perils of righteous Gentiles who put their lives on the line to save their Jewish friends and neighbors.

Despite the catastrophic loss of life during World War II, many courageous voices are still with us and our library also offers the following diaries and journals:

Rutka's Notebook : A Voice From the Holocaust

The Journal of Hélène Berr

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak : Five Notebooks From the Łódź Ghetto

An Interrupted Life : The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

The Heart Has Reasons : Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage

If you or a loved one are inspired to write a memoir or start keeping a journal for posterity, the library can help you in this endeavor with the following books:

The Art of Writing Memoir [eAudioBook] : Finding the Past In the Present by Natalie Goldberg

Writing & Selling Your Memoir [eBook] by Paula Balzer

The Memoir and the Memoirist : Reading and Writing Personal Narrative byThomas Larson

Note To Self : On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Samara O'Shea

Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal: The Art of Transforming a Life Into Stories by Alexandra Johnson

The POTUS Diaries: Books Written by Presidents

"They are international superstars, and yet they are public servants. We are united by the ideal they represent, but we are often divided by the policies they enact. As the 2012 election concludes, take a look beyond the ballots and past the process."
~Robin Rothman, "Penned by Presidents"

Many of our former presidents have written books.  Most are autobiographies, but a few, such as John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, have written histories, a novel, even poetry.   Some have had their writings collected by editors, such as Harry S. Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Since we just finished election season and with the latest Lincoln biopic currently in theaters (based in part on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin), we thought this might be a good time to revisit the writings of some of our presidents of recent memory.

#32 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR's Fireside Chats

#33 Harry S. Truman
Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman

#34 Dwight D. Eisenhower
Crusade in Europe

#35 John F. Kennedy
Profiles in Courage

#37 Richard M. Nixon
In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal

# 38  Gerald R. Ford
A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford

#39  Jimmy Carter
An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of My Rural Boyhood

#40 Ronald Reagan
An American Life

#41 George H. W. Bush
All the Best, George Bush:  My Life in Letters and Other Writings

#42  Bill Clinton
My Life

#43  George W. Bush
Decision Points

#44  Barack Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Extraordinary Biographies

Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer

It seems that every time you turn on the TV now there is a new show featuring someone hunting out the paranormal or the supernatural: ghost hunters, monster hunters, UFO hunters. But there was a time when such researches were far from everyday, and it took a special type of person to pursue the anomalous. 

Charles Fort (1874-1932) was so diligent in his studies of anomalous phenomena, and his findings were so remarkable, that he influenced generations of researchers to come and actually lent his name to the field. Researchers now speak of Fortean events - falls of frogs and fishes, levitation, unexplained disappearances, spontaneous fires, etc. - and refer to collections of reports of such phenomena as Forteana. A print magazine, The Fortean Times, has since 1991 offered monthly updates on such reports.

Jim Steinmeyer (a designer of equipment for professional stage magicians, and author of several biographies of famous magicians) has done an admirable job of pulling together a biography of Charles Fort. A man who spent much of his life in libraries poring over old journals, meticulously making notes of the things he found that did not fit any of the accepted scientific beliefs. Notes that he cross-referenced and filed in stacks of shoeboxes, to become the basis for Fort's four published books, Wild Talents, Lo!, New Lands and The Book of the Damned. Books that influenced many of the researchers into the paranormal who are active today.

One of the most remarkable things about Fort is that, while he gave his life to researching and recording unusual and fantastic events and sought always to find patterns that would somehow explain how they could be possible, he managed to avoid taking on any particular belief. He was a wry and wondering commentator on what he had collected, but never felt called upon to present or protect any one viewpoint - a far cry from many of the "objective" researchers active in the field.

Jim Steinmeyer's Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural offers not only a fascinating overview of the life of a fascinating man, but also gives the reader the flavor of the time Fort lived in, a time when scientific conclusions were being drawn fast and furious and the average person was often left struggling to catch up.

Related reading:

"Forteana" titles

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Many people have heard of Edgar Cayce, mostly due to two popular biographies: Jess Stearn's Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, and Thomas Sugrue's There Is A River. These biographies revealed to the world the extraordinary story of Cayce who, after being put into a trance by a traveling hypnotist, not only cured his own ailment but developed the ability to diagnose and suggest cures for other people. Cayce's fame grew, especially once he went beyond medical diagnoses and started speaking on a wide variety of subjects including, famously, Atlantis. Cayce (1877-1945) founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which to this day continues to study and disseminate the information contained within the "readings" that Cayce gave while in a trance (which practice led to his being called "The Sleeping Prophet").

But Sidney Kirkpatrick, in the more recent biography Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet, now reveals that the most remarkable stories about Cayce had long gone untold.

Kirkpatrick, given unprecedented access to Cayce materials over a period of seven years, shows that many extraordinary tales had been left out of the previous biographies, partly due to concern for the privacy of Cayce's relatives and partly due to the fear that the truth would not be believed.

It seems that Cayce not only provided diagnoses, past life histories, and predictions while in trance, but also experienced visions and paranormal events while awake. Fires of unexplained beginnings plagued his life. He had visitations from angels, and a lifelong involvement with "little folk" - fairies. (It also seems he had a longtime extramarital relationship with his assistant.)

One question people often ask about psychics is, "Why aren't they rich?" Kirkpatrick chronicles how Cayce, perennially short of funds for his Association, tried many times to make money with his powers but somehow only ended up adding to the problems in his life (even though some people around him grew wealthy using his insights).

Some of the newly-revealed information is so fantastic that the reader may occasionally wish that the author of the book was a bit more critical in his discussion of them. But for anyone familiar with Cayce the new information provides "the rest of the story", and for those just learning about this remarkable man this book will be a startling read. Cayce's fame arose during a time when folk traditions in medicine were being replaced by science-based practices, and Kirkpatrick's book helps place that time and conflict in perspective.

Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet examines not only the life of a remarkable and controversial man, but also a period in history when a belief in prophets was still strong.

Related reading:

There is a river : the story of Edgar Cayce / by Thomas Sugrue

Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet / Jess Stearn

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We've all heard the stories: someone experiencing a violent accident or a critical surgery leaves their body, heads into a tunnel of light and meets dead family members. Sometimes they see angels or God; sometimes they see their whole life reviewed before them. But they come back into their bodies and live to tell of their experiences.

We've all heard those stories, that is, since 1977 and the publication of Raymond Moody's book Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death. The book was a bestseller, and soon everyone was talking about "near-death experiences" (a term Moody coined) and TV comedians were joking about people heading into the light.

Moody's new book, Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife, details not only the researches that lead to the publication of the earlier book but also Moody's pursuits since then, studies that have pushed his already extraordinary findings even further.

While Moody has resisted ever stating that his findings constitute proof of life after death (much to the consternation of those who think his researches represent exactly that), he does admit that many of his findings could be interpreted as being in support of the supernatural view. The near-death experience involves experiences out-of-body just as in many metaphysical disciplines, and during experimentation he encountered what seemed like people expressing memories of past lives.

A good scientist (with degrees in philosophy, psychology, and medicine), Moody examined these anomalous findings, with the particular intention of finding how such experiences might be used in the therapeutic setting. Many near-death experiencers had reported it was a life-changing event, usually for the better, and Moody wondered how such an experience could be induced short of taking subjects to the brink of death. (A brink with which he is familiar -- part of Moody's personal journey is to reveal in this autobiography his own struggles with depression and an attempt at suicide, the depression caused by a long-undiagnosed thyroid condition.)

To foster the altered states necessary for people to have visions of departed loved ones, Moody turned to the ancient practice of scrying: staring into a crystal ball, mirror, or pool of liquid to gain insight. Even though Moody had learned that scrying was a common practice in the ancient world, he was still startled at the results of his scientific studies - not only were most of the subjects able to "see" their lost loved ones, many people also reported that the person "came out of the mirror" and had conversations with them! Conversations that did indeed have therapeutic value.

Moody's work continues to challenge our understanding of dying, death, and the possibility of an afterlife, and Paranormal: My Life in the Pursuit of the Afterlife gives insight into the path of a scientist whose researches keep leading him into new, seemingly unscientific, territory.

Related reading:

Life after Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon--Survival of Bodily Death by Raymond A. Moody, Jr

Life after Loss: Conquering Grief and Finding Hope by Raymond A. Moody, Jr. and Dianne Arcangel

The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death by Gary E. Schwartz with William L. Simon ; foreword by Deepak Chopra

Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena  by James R.Lewis ; foreword by Raymond Moody