Review by New York Times Review
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, by Colson Whitehead. (Anchor, $16.95.) Whitehead's boldly inventive novel follows Cora, a slave in Georgia making her escape to freedom on a literal underground railroad. As she encounters horror after horror, the story trains an eye on aspects of black history too often co-opted by white narrators. This book, one of the Book Review's 10 best of 2016, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017. CANNIBALISM: A Perfectly Natural History, by Bill Schutt. (Algonquin, $16.95.) It wasn't just the Donner party. Cannibalism is often the rule, not the exception, for many species. Schutt's breezy tone helps keep disgust at bay, and the book is full of surprising detail: In China, for example, elites during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) regularly feasted on humans, and the practice continued well into the late 1960s. A PIECE OF THE WORLD, by Christina Baker Kline. (William Morrow/HarperCollins, $16.99.) Kline imagines the inner life of the woman with polio crawling across a desolate field in Andrew Wyeth's iconic painting, "Christina's World." "Both painter and writer have a fine-grained feel for the setting," our reviewer, Becky Aikman, wrote. "Christina's yearning, her determination, her will to dream, occupy the emotional center in both the novel and the painting." PHENOMENA: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigation Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, by Annie Jacobsen. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.99.) For decades, the military has tried to harness the supernatural - to find hostages, for example, or to read foreign governments' minds. Jacobsen's account is full of entertaining anecdotes; she catalogs the seers, the spoon-benders and the researchers who administered ESP tests to plants, all funded in the interest of national security. ILL WILL, by Dan Chaon. (Ballantine, $17.) This dark literary thriller deals with recovered memories, satanistic ritual and childhood trauma. Dustin, a psychologist in his 40s, is grappling with a tragic past: His parents, aunt and uncle were murdered and his adopted brother, Rusty, was convicted of the crime. But new DNA evidence helped overturn the ruling, and Rusty's exoneration stirs up long-repressed guilt and fear. MY UTMOST: A Devotional Memoir, by Macy Halford. (Vintage, $17.) "My Utmost for His Highest," a book loved by evangelicals, was central to Halford's faith when she was growing up. Years later, as her beliefs shifted, she investigated the book's origins and its author, Oswald Chambers. Her memoir is both a mediation on "a complicated nostalgia" for the faith of her childhood and an intellectual biography of Chambers.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
In her latest eye-opening work of investigative journalism, Jacobsen digs deeply into the rich vein of information gleaned from declassified U.S. government documents that catapulted her previous books, Area 51 (2011) and The Pentagon's Brain (2015), to best-seller status. Here the vaults are opened on research involving mind reading and other psychic abilities that the CIA and other intelligence agencies conducted since the end of WWII. Drawing on both written archives and interviews with more than 50 ex-government scientists and psychics, Jacobsen offers a smorgasbord of captivating and often-surprising facts unearthed from more than four decades of secret investigations. For instance, the inspiration for the CIA's original consideration of ESP as an espionage tool was a similar Nazi program sponsored by Heinrich Himmler. One research avenue explored the potential use of magic psilocybin mushrooms for boosting psychic ability. Jacobsen also reports on opinions about these fringe projects from skeptics, including Martin Gardner, and celebrity ESP believers such as Uri Geller and the late astronaut and mystic Edgar Mitchell. A fascinating peek at a little-seen side of national security.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Jacobsen (The Pentagon's Brain) continues her disturbing excavations of the inner workings of the American defense and intelligence establishment in this fascinating exposé of governmental research into "anomalous mental phenomena." The U.S. government sought to surveil its enemies and gain the upper hand in what was perceived to be a very real threat on Earth as well as in space. This was not merely a war of perception: the U.S.S.R. had embarked on ESP-based efforts of its own, including the bombardment of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with focused microwaved beams. The result was an unprecedented arms race of the psychic kind. Readers may be familiar with MKUltra, the CIA's program to develop mind-control techniques, but they'll be surprised by the breadth and dedication of the government's efforts to study paranormal activity, which included drafting the likes of science fiction author Aldous Huxley and self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller. Attempting to stay a step ahead of their foreign (and potential otherworldly) enemies, they investigated related phenomena, most notably remote viewing, which resulted in the creation of a dedicated remote viewing program in the U.S. Army. Jacobsen artfully deals card after dutifully researched card in her enthralling reportage on one of America's most curious defense endeavors. Agent: James Hornfischer, Hornfischer Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
From biological agents to artificial intelligence, the military has developed an array of weapons that advance science and may cross moral lines. Jacobsen exposed much of this progress in her previous work, The Pentagon's Brain. Her latest book reveals how U.S. military agencies investigated and applied paranormal phenomena for defense. The author uses declassified information and interviews to weave a compelling narrative and support her research. Paranoia about Soviet research into this realm led to the creation of these programs, some of which cost millions to develop. This is an excellent read that gives ample evidence on both sides of the argument that extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis exist, complementing such works as W. Adam Mandelbaum's The Psychic Battlefield and Ann Finkbeiner's The Jasons. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in the military and the paranormal.-Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Jacobsen (The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency, 2015, etc.) journeys into the realm where the paranormal and the bureaucratic meet.By the author's account, places like Area 51 and Roswell are the real deal, landing sites and contact points for ETs and those who love them. In her latest book, she looks into the men-who-stare-at-goats investigations of the government, programs born of the Cold War and the need to combat the Red Menace on all fronts, including the extrasensory. So it is that, she writes, during the 1950s, the CIA was swept up in a "quest to locate an ESP-enhancing drug," which included plenty of trial runs and a budget line for, as an official memo put it, "studying and collecting hallucinogenic species of mushrooms of interest." Other projects, chemically assisted or not, fell under the aegis of various branches of the government, mostly military, with experiments taking place at venues like Fort Meadehome, of course, of the National Security Agency. Some venues were farther-flung. In an odd moment during the Apollo 14 moon landing, an astronaut conducted "mind-to-mind telepathy tests" with a couple of earthbound psychics. Later in the book, the Israeli phenomenalist Uri Geller enters the picture, which may set off the BS detectors of those who remember the controversies surrounding his heyday. Jacobsen's narrative, punctuated by Zener cards and secret government outposts, makes for entertaining reading, but as with her book Area 51 (2011), either you're disposed to believe it or not from the outset; there's not much in the way of compelling evidence here despite all the players from various agencies and the large amounts of money spent on keeping them busy. And speaking of agencies, there's the obligatory throwback to the paranormal researches of the Third Reich, the stuff of The Morning of the Magicians. The occultly inclined will be duly enchanted. The materialistswell, not so much. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
