While hundreds of books have been written about the "New Age", none has analysed this persuasive and uniquely American phenomenon from a skeptical point of view. Not until Not Necessarily the New Age, that is. In the 18 essays collected here, some of the nation's most daring thinkers take a long, hard look at the beliefs and practices of America's recent spiritualist revival. The essays cover a wide range of subjects - from reincarnation to trance channeling and transpersonal psychology.
The history, culture, ideas and politics of the movement are closely scrutinised. James Webb, author of The Occult Establishment, traces the origins of the movement to the counterculture of the 1960s. Historian J. Gordon Melton goes further back in time, seeing in the New Age's rejection of science and traditional religion direct ties to 19th-century American spiritualism, including the Transcendental movement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science and the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky, which won many distinguished converts both in this country and abroad.
Martin Gardner, in "Isness Is Her Business" takes on possibly the best known convert of the New Age movement, Shirley MacLaine, as well as the many trance channelers (and their spirit entities) rocketed to celebrity status by MacLaine's series of best-selling autobiographies.
The book also includes Robert Basil's interview with Brad Steiger - author of more than 100 books on UFOs, astral projections, psychic powers etc., and one on the New Age's most ubiquitous entrepreneurs; as well as a commentary on the movement by Ted Schultz, who recounts his personal odyssey from an occultist/visionary of the sixties to a doctoral student of evolutionary biology at Cornell University in the eighties.
Many of these essays are certain to become classics, including Paul Edwards's scholarly critique of reincarnation, Jay Rosen's probing essay on television and the New Age and Village Voice critic Leslie Berman's review of New Age music.
Other contributors are Carl Sagan on skepticism; Maureen O'Hara on mythmongering; Melvin Harris on past-life regression; Philip J. Klass on UFO "abductions"; Carl Raschke on the New Age and economics; Marc Medoff of Whole Life magazine on a con-scheme promoted by New Age leaders to fleece their flocks of thousands of dollars; Susan Blackmore on out-of-body experiences; Alan MacRobert on "New Age Hokum"; and Al Seckel on "A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation".
Not Necessarily the New Age provides a thorough, rigorous and fair analysis of a trend that has taken the country by storm. The essays are informative, authoritative and witty.
Robert Basil, formerly executive editor of Free Inquiry magazine, has written extensively on popular culture and the New Age Movement.