Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death [Paperback]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poision Squad and The Poisoner's Handbook tells the amazing story of William James's quest for empirical evidence of the spirit world

What if a world-renowned philosopher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard suddenly announced he believed in ghosts? At the close of the nineteenth century, the illustrious William James led a determined scientific investigation into unexplainable incidences of clairvoyance and ghostly visitations. James and a small group of eminent scientists staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity on one of the most extraordinary quests ever undertaken: to empirically prove the existence of ghosts, spirits, and psychic phenomena. What they pursued—and what they found—raises questions as fascinating today as they were then.Ghost HuntersPrelude
1. The Night Side
2. A Spirit of Unbelief
3. Lights and Shadows
4. Metaphysics and Metatrousers
5. Infinite Rationality
6. All Ye Who Enter Here
7. The Principles of Psychology
8. The Invention of Ectoplasm
9. The Unearthly Archive
10. A Prophecy of Death
11. A Force Not Generally Recognized
12. A Ghost Story

Acknowledgments
Notes and Sources
Index

Fascinating . . . Blum tells her literally wondrous tale very well. (The New York Times Book Review)

A fascinating reminder that reason and revelation are not opposites. (James Shreve, author of The Genome War)Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She worked as a newspaper science writer for twenty years, winning the Pulitzer in 1992 for her writing about primals$