Customer Reviews

Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death

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This is one of the really excellent modern works in this field. I can't believe no one else has reviewed it. It is light years ahead of the New Age silliness which dominates modern writing on life after death. The author is a professor with excellent credentials, and this is a serious and balanced study of the evidence for personal survival. He focuses on the best evidence in each of several different areas (reincarnation, apparitions, etc.) and considers alternative (i.e., skeptical) interpretations. He finds some of the evidence compelling and some of it not-so-compelling, but the book as a whole is very pro-survival. This book is frequently cited and seems to have become pretty much a standard reference. If you have any interest in the possibility of life after death, this belongs in your library.

This book is divided into several sections: Reincarnation, Out of Body Experiences, Apparations of the Dead, and a few others. In each section, the author provides some leading cases (although not enough NEW cases) and research of others as evidence for something existing. Then he presents the critics arguments, and he attempts to review both sides of the case.

One thing that I found disappointing about the book is that the author has done zero research on his own. He has read widely on the subjects at hand, but the book is essentially his opinion of the arguments. He trys to use logical arguments to destroy the critics position, and for the most part, he succeeds. It seems he was more critical of the critics than of the researchers such as Ian Stevenson to the point I question his impartiality on the subject.

The book has value in that he provides the user with a wide range of arguments against the various claims.

Frankly, it was the death of my parents last year that facilitated my interest in reading about anything that provided evidence of life after death. Although a bit wordy, this text presented the most thoughtful and educated material I have read about the subject so far.