THEATRE OF TRANCE

Amy Lehman. Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance: Mediums, Spiritualists and Mesmerists in Performance. McFarland and Company, 2009.

There is a growing academic interest in the spiritualist movement and its alleged phenomena as a means of artistic expression, We have reviewed in the past several studies which have reviewed 'spirit photographs' in the context of the art and history of photography and their use of the conventions of photography and related visual arts. Now it is the turn of the performing arts.
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THE RINGS OF EARTH

A stunning piece of imaginative animation, with a hat-tip to Kentaro Mori: http://forgetomori.com/

WITCHCRAFT AND MASCULINITY

Alison Rowlands. (ed.). Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

There are two popular modern conceptions about the witchcraft trials of the early modern period, the idea that they were a sort of gender war launched by patriarchal males against women, and a older idea that they represented the hangover from medieval superstition.
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THE ART AND AIRSHIPS OF CHARLES DELLSCHAU

Dennis Crenshaw (In collaboration with P. G. Navarro). The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club and the Airships of the 1800's. Anomalist Books, 2009.

When he died at the great age of 92 in 1923, Texas butcher Charles A. Dellschau left behind a secret and a mystery. These were a series of note books, filled with paintings of fantastic flying machines, which only came to light when his descendants had a clearout. By a process of serendipity they came to the attention of graphic designer and ufologist Peter Navarro.

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THE PELICAN AT SOCORRO

We learn that Lonnie Zamora, the witness of the famous Socorro UFO incident has died. This has provoked a flurry of comments on the American UFO UpDates discussion group, particularly in response to previous allegations by Anthony Bragalia on the UFO Iconoclast(s) blog http://ufocon.blogspot.com/ that the event was a hoax perpetrated by students at New Mexico Tech college. This had led to a great deal of foaming at the mouth by some of the UpDates regulars, particularly because of the allegations' unfortunate coincidence with Zamora's death.

Our friend the Pelican had a few words to say about possible hoaxes at Socorro in his column in Magonia 91, published February 2007:

THE HISTORY OF POPULAR SCIENCE

Peter J. Bowler. Science for All: The Popularisation of Science in Early Twentieth Century Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

In the interwar period radical scientists such as J. B. S. Haldane complained that few scientists were willing to write for the general public, and from this the idea has grown up that this was a dearth period between the popular science writing of the Victorian period and the kind of mass popular science writing of today.

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