Through a Glass, Darkly

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Solve the Greatest Mystery of All

Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Inspiration & Meditation, Spirituality, Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book Through a Glass, Darkly by Stefan Bechtel, Laurence Roy Stains, St. Martin's Press
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Author: Stefan Bechtel, Laurence Roy Stains ISBN: 9781466888463
Publisher: St. Martin's Press Publication: June 13, 2017
Imprint: St. Martin's Press Language: English
Author: Stefan Bechtel, Laurence Roy Stains
ISBN: 9781466888463
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication: June 13, 2017
Imprint: St. Martin's Press
Language: English

2018 ASJA Award-Winner in the Biography/History Category

Is it possible to make direct contact with the dead? Do the departed seek to make contact with us? The conviction that both things are true was the cornerstone of spiritualism, a kind of do-it-yourself religion that swept the Western world from the 1850s to the 1930s. Prominent artists and poets, prime ministers and scientists, all joined hands around the séance table. But the movement's most famous spokesman by far was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose public quarrels with Houdini over the truth of spiritualism made headlines across the country.

Known to the world as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had undergone what many considered an enigmatic transformation, turning his back on the hyper-rational Holmes and plunging into the supernatural. What was it that convinced a brilliant man, the creator of the great exemplar of cold, objective thought, that there was a reality beyond reality?

Though most modern sources make Conan Doyle out to be a kindly but credulous old fool, and though the spiritualist era was rife with fraud, Stefan Bechtel and Laurence Roy Stains take a closer look. They reexamine the old records of trance mediums and séances, and they discover that what Conan Doyle and his colleagues uncovered is as difficult to dismiss now as it was then.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

2018 ASJA Award-Winner in the Biography/History Category

Is it possible to make direct contact with the dead? Do the departed seek to make contact with us? The conviction that both things are true was the cornerstone of spiritualism, a kind of do-it-yourself religion that swept the Western world from the 1850s to the 1930s. Prominent artists and poets, prime ministers and scientists, all joined hands around the séance table. But the movement's most famous spokesman by far was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose public quarrels with Houdini over the truth of spiritualism made headlines across the country.

Known to the world as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had undergone what many considered an enigmatic transformation, turning his back on the hyper-rational Holmes and plunging into the supernatural. What was it that convinced a brilliant man, the creator of the great exemplar of cold, objective thought, that there was a reality beyond reality?

Though most modern sources make Conan Doyle out to be a kindly but credulous old fool, and though the spiritualist era was rife with fraud, Stefan Bechtel and Laurence Roy Stains take a closer look. They reexamine the old records of trance mediums and séances, and they discover that what Conan Doyle and his colleagues uncovered is as difficult to dismiss now as it was then.

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