WHY TOLERATE RELIGION?

Brian Leiter. Why Tolerate Religion? Princeton University Press, 2012.

In his Introduction the author writes: "The central puzzle in this book is why the state should have to tolerate exemptions from generally applicable laws when they conflict with religious obligations but not with any other serious obligations of conscience".
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THE WITCHES OF WITTENBURG

Lyndal Roper, The Witch in the Western Imagination. University of Virginia Press, 2012.

While it is true that publishers - even those of distinguished university presses - love to exert often flagrant spin on book titles, this one is so egregiously unfaithful to the text as to merit an acrimonious divorce. To be fair, however, a totally truthful 'The Witch in the Imagination of the People of a Small Bit of Southern Germany Between the Late 16th and Early 19th Centuries' might be deemed rather niche even to academics.
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THE WELSH WIZARD

Dean Powell. Dr William Price: Wales’s First Radical. Amberley. 2012

Did you know that Jesus Christ died on the 21st June 1963? This particular Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ or Iesu Grist Price, the second and surviving son of Dr William Price, the subject of this book. It was the circumstances surrounding the death of disposal of his elder brother, who bore the same name, which finally made his father nationally notorious.
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JIM MOSELEY 1931 -2012

A day or two after I heard the sad news of the death from cancer of Jim Moseley – the ‘Supreme Commander’ of Saucer Smear magazine - I saw an item on the TV news about the last ever typewriter to be manufactured in Britain, by the Brother company of North Wales. The machine is to be donated to the Science Museum. What could be the connection between these two events? They represent to me the passing of an era.

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MISREADING THE CARDS

Nicholas Swift. Mirror of the Free. O-books, 2011.

The author suggests that the imagery of the Tarot pack, specifically the classic Tarot of Marseilles, derives from the religious iconography of ancient Babylon, as depicted on surviving cylindrical seals. This seems plausible, since some of the Tarot trumps (also called the Major Arcana) are roughly identical to illuminations in medieval astrological manuscripts, whose contents were ultimately derived from Babylonia. Nevertheless, his case is not convincingly argued.
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AMERICAN VAMPIRES

Bob Curran. American Vampires. New Page Books, 2012.

Anyone picking up this book and hoping for a gore-fest of fangs sinking into throats might be disappointed, it’s far more interesting than that. Dr Bob Curran is a folklorist, and he describes the vampire legend as being just part of a wider folk tradition that involves entities, objects and places that draw, not blood per se, but the vital energy of people who come into contact with them.
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THE MUMMY'S CURSE

Roger Luckhurst. The Mummy’s Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy. Oxford University Press, 2012

When on the 5th of April 1923, Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the archaeological excavation that had unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamen the previous November, died from an infected insect bite, the rumour went around that he had been the victim of some ancient curse.
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MUTANTS AND MYSTICS

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, University of Chigaco Press, 2011.

Mutants and Mystics is a fascinating and stimulating book, and an important one. It's one of the most authentically Fortean works I've read a long time, as well as being perfectly in tune with the spirit of  Magonia, since its addresses head-on the relationship between culture and the paranormal (defined in its widest sense to include everything from psi to UFOs and alien encounters).

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GUIDING LIGHTS?

Andrew Collins. Lightquest: Your Guide to Seeing and Interacting with UFOs, Mystery Lights and Plasma Intelligences. Eagle Wing Books, 2012.

In a way the title tells you all you really need to know about this book. Collins's proposal that UFOs are themselves intelligent entities is not a new concept, and can be traced back quite a way in the history of ufology.

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MEETING 'THE MADAME'

Gary Lachman, Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality. Tarcher/Penguin, 2012.

There are few superstars in modern occult/esoteric history – literally and perhaps even figuratively names to conjure with - but apart from the ubiquitous Crowley, the only other big name that springs almost unbidden to mind is that of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (‘HPB’).
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OLD NICK'S WEIRD WORLD

Nick Redfern. The World’s Weirdest Places. New Page Books, 2012.

Nick Redfern is well-known to regular readers of forteana, being a prolific and enthusiastic writer on many subjects that come under that heading.  He has certainly been at it for a number of years, and has books, radio appearances and lectures under his (metaphorically) capacious belt.  He has been the author of many pieces for magazines and periodicals, among them the august Fortean Times. 
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CLEARING THE UFO DESK

David Clarke. The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings. 2nd edition Bloomsbury/National Archives. 2012

With the last tranche of the Ministry of Defence UFO files now put on line, David Clarke’s survey of some of the more interesting material in those files, originally published by The National Archives in 2009 and reviewed HERE has now been expanded and reissued.
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THE PELICAN ON THE STRANGE DEATH OF UFO UPDATES

The Pelican's campaign to Make Ufology History has been hampered by the efforts of ufologists and journalists to provide the credulous proletariat with an unending supply of amazing UFO testimony, fake photos and videos, and, for the dedicated UFO believers, the lecture-circuit liars who tour those crazy UFO conferences.

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