The "Gold Leaf Lady" refers to the case the chapter on which not only opens this book but is also its longest chapter. As the apparent gold turns out at the end to be only brass, the "Gold Leaf Lady" may serve as an excellent metaphor for parapsychological research: if you dig into it, you'll find something, but things are not as they appear, and what you found may be quite different from what you expected. It needs to have an open, non-prejudiced mind to carry out investigations in the paranormal. The author, Stephen Braude, is the right man in the right place. Being a professor in philosophy, he is a sharp and critical thinker, yet open-minded. This new book by him is different from his previous ones on related matters: as a case collection, it provides - though being scientifically reliable - rather easy reading stuff compared to his more scholarly books such as "First Person Plural" (on Multiple Personality Syndroma), "The Limits of Influence" (on psychokinesis), and "Immortal Remains" (on the issue of "survival" of bodily death) which are all highly recommendable.
The "Gold Leaf Lady", being a collection of several cases investigated by the author, has the additional advantage of being much more personal than his previous books. The reader accompanies the author, so to speak, meets the people he meets, etc., which makes everything very vivid.
Besides the "Gold Lead Lady" herself, there are several chapters on various topics and gifted persons (including one historical one) and a chapter on meaningful coincidences. What I found most intriguing is the case of the late Ted Serios, the man who was able to project mental images on polaroid film (labelled "thoughtography"). As Jules Eisenbud, the psychoanalyst/psychiatrist who over a number of years carried out the investigation of the Serios phenomena, has passed there was need to secure the Serios material. Braude was instrumental in this process that he describes in some detail. As one might recall, the eminent British psychologist/ parapsychologist John Beloff has detailed his fellow parapsychologist into two camps that he labelled "minimalists" and "maximalists" - the minimalists are those, like famous J.B. Rhine, who deal with effects that are very marginal in themselves, receiving their importance only through statistical analysis, thus following a "bottom-up approach". The maximalists, on the other hand, pursuing rather a "top-down approach", are more interested in large phenomena; Braude clearly falls into this category (and righteously so, I may add), and Beloff himself left no doubt that he sided with the "maximalists". I mentioned this to put Beloff's statement into perspective, "could there be anything more maximalist than thoughtography?".
The final chapter, however, is quite different, insofar, as it is not dealing with parapsychology but with - horribile dictu - astrology. It is an even more personal account than the other chapters as the astrologer in question is Gina Braude, the author's beloved wife. I am not sure whether the application of the traditional term "astrology" is correct in her case; discussing the conceptual foundations of astrology is not the issue, Braude deals with facts only, astonishing facts I'd say, where her predictions turned out to be correct. A good deal of these predictions refers to the world of finance (stocks rising or falling, and the like); there is no way she might have got all these correct by chance. (Of course, strictly spoken, from a statistician point of view, chance can never be ruled out, however, in her case presuming chance makes no sense at all.) So, what is it then? True astrology? I don't believe in astrology, for more than one reason (no concept of the kind of the presumed underlying `influence', or otherwise, no concept what makes such presumed correlations work, moreover, the celestial signs have changed their position during the past 2000 or so years whereas the attributes of these signs have not been adjusted accordingly by classical astrology, etc.). So, again, what is it then? A pure miracle (at least, at present)!
I rate the entire book (like all of Braude's publications) as highly recommendable for readers interested in anomalies and in parapsychology; it is thought-provoking and witty. I, for one, enjoyed it a lot.
