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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
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A Pervasive Superstion's History, March 23, 2005
We live in a scientifically advanced world, but every time Friday the thirteenth comes around, people notice it. They may shrug it off as silly, but they continue to think that the day has some special portent, and most people think that the tradition goes back centuries. One of the many surprises in _13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition_ (Thunder's Mouth Press) by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is that although the superstition that the number 13 is unlucky has a substantial history, superstition attached specifically to Friday the thirteenth is no older than the twentieth century. Lachenmeyer's book is an enjoyable tour looking at the different 13 superstitions (there are many of them), trying to make historic sense of why people have adopted this number as some sort of portentous sign. Lachenmeyer came to the subject by chance, reading an article in an old scrapbook about the Thirteen Club, but has never had any particular feeling toward the number: "To me, 13 has always been just a number. I have never believed that 13 is unlucky or been tempted to thumb my nose at fate and make it my lucky number (I don't have one)." He is not a triskaidekaphobe (13 fearer) or triskaidekaphile (13 lover), but there are plenty of both, especially the former, in these pages. In some ways, they have formed parts of the world as we now know it. Friday the thirteenth is just the most popular, and modern, manifestation of superstitions connected to thirteen, but there is no evidence that thirteen was considered unlucky before the seventeenth century. It first was written about in 1695, in a story involving a dinner at which thirteen were seated around the table. The superstition that one of the thirteen diners would die within the year became strongest during the nineteenth century. It may have had its roots in the idea that thirteen at the table at the Last Supper proved to be bad luck for two of them. There is a hero in Lachenmeyer's book, Captain William Fowler, a Civil War veteran who had fought in thirteen battles in the war, and in a clubbable age, belonged to thirteen social clubs. He aimed to tempt fate if fate there be; in 1881 in New York, he started a new club which would meet on the thirteenth of each month and sit thirteen to a table. This was not enough for Fowler; members had to walk under ladders, face spilled portions of salt, and so on. No one dining at tables of thirteen had any particular ill-luck, and it is quite probably that Fowler helped do away with this version of the superstition. A new version emerged after the publication of a book _Friday, the Thirteenth_, in 1907; unlucky Fridays and unlucky thirteen had not previously been linked, but they were almost immediately after this bestseller, and in 1971, a horror film originally titled _Long Night at Camp Blood_, was renamed _Friday the 13th_ to imitate the calendrically popular _Halloween_. The franchise has spawned ten sequels so far, and the Friday version of the thirteen superstition may have a longer life than the dinner version. In this entertaining examination of a particular superstition, Lachenmeyer shows that the 13 superstition has come and gone in different versions in the past, and undoubtedly will stay with us, and in newer forms. It is a scary world out there, and for many of us, there are forces at work that we cannot feel or see or understand, but we can feel we are taking some control against the chaos by taking out a small insurance policy. Avoiding thirteens is relatively easy, and those who practice it can always maintain that it is better to be safe than sorry. As Lachenmeyer writes, "Reason governs a much smaller domain in the world of ideas than we are accustomed to acknowledging." This may be so, but his clear-eyed examination of this small aspect of human behavior can only make the domain larger.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why hasn't this book been published before?, December 6, 2004
Unlucky 13 is a superstition that has been with us for a long, long time. So why has it taken a long, long time for our writers to finally ask the question: where did Unlucky 13 come from? Fortunately Nathaniel Lachenmeyer not only dares to ask the question but also shrewdly proceeds to answer it and explain the myth's development from a variety of alternate perspectives: religious, psychologial, educational, social, etc. You can tell this is a guy who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty--he willingly digs through old newspaper clippings and obscure books that are centuries old, in search of historical clues that pinpoint the legend of unlucky 13. One of the most redeeming qualities of this book is the amount of work the writer has obviously put into the delivery of a quality product. I had no idea (before reading 13) that one origin of the superstition was The Last Supper (Jesus and his 12 disciples) or that a popular social club in the early 20th century was created for the sole purpose of debunking the myth of Unlucky 13 at a dinner table (the details of which I shall leave to your reading.) Mr. Lachenmeyer also reveals a gift for recognizing nuance. "Friday, the 13th" as listed in an early 20th century edition of the New York Times eventually becomes a few years later "Friday the 13th" (without a comma!) revealing a subtle but very real hint of how popular perception of that day changed in a short time. You can do worse with your time than put yourself in Mr. Lachenmeyer's talented hands. His attention to detail, his perceptive intelligence and reverberating eagerness to reseach the heck out of "13" and get to the bottom of this popular superstition help create a reading experience that will leave you satisified, entertained and in possession of a great topic for your next dinner-time conversation. Well done!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
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SURPRISES ABOUT 13, October 31, 2004
This book is chock full of surprising historical and contemporary information on people's beliefs and feelings about the number 13. One of the first surprises is that, in addition to people who are afraid of 13, there are people who have equally strong positive reactions. Mr. Lachenmeyer gives us a charming history of Thirteen Clubs whose members, many of them influential, met over dinner specifically to flout superstitions, including those about the number 13. Fear of 13 is often associated with the history of Christianity, and the book describes the role of 13 in the Last Supper and in the story of the Knights Templar. A section dealing with contemporary beliefs about the Templars will be of interest to devotees of Dan Brown.
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