“Through Ian Stevenson’s life, Bering deftly examines the ignored and mocked corners of the behavioral sciences. Never dismissive and never credulous, Bering shows how parapsychology—ESP, survival, reincarnation—walked the same academic corridors as psychology and psychiatry. Bering’s clever biography shows that what’s been marginalized deserves a place in the light. A revealing tale, and a fun one.” 

Joshua Blu Buhs, author of “Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers”

“Here is a balanced biography of Ian Stevenson that is sensitive to our twentieth-first century concerns as it connects the psychiatrist’s humanity to his many books and ideas, including his early psychedelic studies and his final speculations on birthmarks and the ‘psychophore’ of the reincarnating soul. In these pages, the reader encounters both a humane fairness and a potential ontological shock.”

Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of “How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else”

"Jesse Bering asks the questions no one else dares, he tells truths that others shy away from, and he writes the books that I wish I had written. To me, he is everything a great scientist and communicator should be. Suicide may be an uncomfortable subject yet the escalating numbers of people who take their lives each year means we must make it’s unravelling our priority. I have no doubt this book will have a profound impact on all who read it, and add considerably to our understanding of that self-willed oblivion, whether it lies palpably just beneath our own skin, or the skins of those we love. But perhaps most importantly of all it will help dispel the stigma and shame that so perniciously clings to all suicides."

Dr. Christian Jessen