Book-It 'o11! Book #9
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives by Jim Tucker
Details: Copyright 2005, Free Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "For the past forty years, doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center have conducted research into young children’s reports of past-life memories. Dr. Ian Stevenson, the founder of this work, has always written for a scientific audience. Now, in this provocative and fascinating book, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist who currently directs the research, shares these studies with the general public. Life Before Life is a landmark work-one that has the potential to challenge and ultimately change our understandings about life and death.
Children who report past-life memories typically begin talking spontaneously about a previous life when they are two to three years old. Some talk about the life of a deceased family member, while others describe the life of a stranger. They may recount details about previous family members, events in the previous life, or the way they died in that life. The children tend to show a strong emotional involvement with the apparent memories and often cry to be taken to the previous family. In many cases, parents have taken their children to the places they named, where they found that an individual had died whose life matched the details given by the child. During the visits, some children have recognized family members or friends from that individual’s life. Many children have had birthmarks that matched wounds on the body of the deceased individual.
Researchers have studied more than 2500 such cases, and their careful investigations have produced an impressive body of work. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, stated in a review of one of Dr. Stevenson’s scientific books that, “in regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases . . . in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds.”
Life Before Life explores the various features of this world-wide phenomenon, describing numerous cases along the way. We meet a boy in Michigan who, after being born with three birthmarks that matched wounds on his deceased brother, begins talking about events from the brother’s life; a boy in Turkey who gives a number of accurate details, including the name, of a man who lived 500 miles away and died fifty years before the boy was born; and a girl in Sri Lanka who is able to recognize the family members of a deceased stranger as they are presented to her one by one, giving specifics about their lives that she could not have known from their appearance.
Dr. Tucker presents this material in a straightforward way, relating extraordinary stories that have been amassed with a scientific approach. He then considers how best to interpret the evidence, and he lets readers reach their own conclusions-which, for many, will be profound. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I enjoyed reading Children's Past Lives a few years ago and it approached the subject from an angle I'd never considered. I thought this book would be more of that work.
How I Liked It: In the book's striving to be an unbiased, scientific source, the material reads almost absurdly dully. It has the dryness of a textbook ("...as we will see in the following chapter.") with none of the engagement.
It's been argued that this book does important work about educating the masses about the mindset of reincarnation, particularly to those that don't believe in it. I'd counter that this book is so dry that no one but the most ardent disbeliever would be willing to slog through it and that's past a point of mind-changing.
Case-studies, always a source of handy and easy engagement, are purged of just about any human element, leaving just the facts, issued flatly.
The author veers towards promising territory a few times by positing scenarios not generally included in the reincarnation debate, such as families deliberately marking a dying relative so they will recognize the person (in the form of a birthmark) when s/he returns. But ultimately, the author's style purges the book of any real engagement with the reader.
I'm very glad to see scientific books out there (part of why I enjoyed Children's Past Lives was the fact the author had a fairly critical approach), but there has to be a better way to process that information than this.
Notable: The author covers a range of cultures (it is forty years worth of study, after all) and includes many Eastern countries where there is a predominant belief in reincarnation. Surprisingly (or perhaps not that surprisingly), it appears parents and care-givers in countries that by and large believe in reincarnation are as skeptical, if not more so, than parents in countries that don't. Another wedge of information that's fascinating and could've been even more so in the hands of a different author.
Title: Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives by Jim Tucker
Details: Copyright 2005, Free Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "For the past forty years, doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center have conducted research into young children’s reports of past-life memories. Dr. Ian Stevenson, the founder of this work, has always written for a scientific audience. Now, in this provocative and fascinating book, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist who currently directs the research, shares these studies with the general public. Life Before Life is a landmark work-one that has the potential to challenge and ultimately change our understandings about life and death.
Children who report past-life memories typically begin talking spontaneously about a previous life when they are two to three years old. Some talk about the life of a deceased family member, while others describe the life of a stranger. They may recount details about previous family members, events in the previous life, or the way they died in that life. The children tend to show a strong emotional involvement with the apparent memories and often cry to be taken to the previous family. In many cases, parents have taken their children to the places they named, where they found that an individual had died whose life matched the details given by the child. During the visits, some children have recognized family members or friends from that individual’s life. Many children have had birthmarks that matched wounds on the body of the deceased individual.
Researchers have studied more than 2500 such cases, and their careful investigations have produced an impressive body of work. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, stated in a review of one of Dr. Stevenson’s scientific books that, “in regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases . . . in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds.”
Life Before Life explores the various features of this world-wide phenomenon, describing numerous cases along the way. We meet a boy in Michigan who, after being born with three birthmarks that matched wounds on his deceased brother, begins talking about events from the brother’s life; a boy in Turkey who gives a number of accurate details, including the name, of a man who lived 500 miles away and died fifty years before the boy was born; and a girl in Sri Lanka who is able to recognize the family members of a deceased stranger as they are presented to her one by one, giving specifics about their lives that she could not have known from their appearance.
Dr. Tucker presents this material in a straightforward way, relating extraordinary stories that have been amassed with a scientific approach. He then considers how best to interpret the evidence, and he lets readers reach their own conclusions-which, for many, will be profound. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I enjoyed reading Children's Past Lives a few years ago and it approached the subject from an angle I'd never considered. I thought this book would be more of that work.
How I Liked It: In the book's striving to be an unbiased, scientific source, the material reads almost absurdly dully. It has the dryness of a textbook ("...as we will see in the following chapter.") with none of the engagement.
It's been argued that this book does important work about educating the masses about the mindset of reincarnation, particularly to those that don't believe in it. I'd counter that this book is so dry that no one but the most ardent disbeliever would be willing to slog through it and that's past a point of mind-changing.
Case-studies, always a source of handy and easy engagement, are purged of just about any human element, leaving just the facts, issued flatly.
The author veers towards promising territory a few times by positing scenarios not generally included in the reincarnation debate, such as families deliberately marking a dying relative so they will recognize the person (in the form of a birthmark) when s/he returns. But ultimately, the author's style purges the book of any real engagement with the reader.
I'm very glad to see scientific books out there (part of why I enjoyed Children's Past Lives was the fact the author had a fairly critical approach), but there has to be a better way to process that information than this.
Notable: The author covers a range of cultures (it is forty years worth of study, after all) and includes many Eastern countries where there is a predominant belief in reincarnation. Surprisingly (or perhaps not that surprisingly), it appears parents and care-givers in countries that by and large believe in reincarnation are as skeptical, if not more so, than parents in countries that don't. Another wedge of information that's fascinating and could've been even more so in the hands of a different author.