Collected Miscellany

–> The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives by Larry Dossey

Description

The doctor-and bestselling author-who first demonstrated the healing effects of prayer now offers an unprecedented look at the science of premonitions.

When Larry Dossey was in his first year of medical practice, he experienced a week of premonitions about patients, all of which came true. He had never had them before; they seemed to have come out of left field. After the sensations stopped, writes Dossey in The Power of Premonitions, “It was as if the universe, having delivered a message, hung up the phone. It was now my job to make sense of it-which I try to do in this book.”

The four parts of The Power of Premonitions take readers through documented cases of premonitions, including a remarkable instance when an entire Nebraska community skipped church the very day it exploded; an examination of recent science studying what is known as “presentiment”; a discussion of what it all means to daily life; and practical, field-tested techniques for inviting premonitions.

Just as he did in Healing Words, the groundbreaking book that propelled Dossey into the public consciousness, in this compelling new book Dossey uses cutting-edge science to prove the value of what had long been considered spiritual mumbo-jumbo. This is a book for the skeptical mind, but it’s also for the believer’s heart-because its author possesses the rare gift of having both.

–> Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg

Kirkus Reviews

A family secret leads Washington Post senior editor Luxenberg to reinterpret his family history. In 1995, the author learned that his aging mother had a sister she had never mentioned. It came up during a visit to the doctor; her parents had institutionalized their disabled two-year-old when she was four, she said, and she never saw her sister again. Since his mother was facing severe medical problems, Luxenberg felt this wasn’t the time to pursue the details. After his mother’s death a few years later, he learned that the sister’s name was Annie and she was buried with his grandparents in Michigan.

Determined to discover the truth about Annie, he began his investigation with an endless list of difficult questions. He learned that Annie had a deformed leg, amputated in 1936 when she was 17, and mental health problems. Her parents committed her to a state institution in 1940, a time when such places served primarily to remove patients from society rather than to help them recover or become fit to live in the outside world. Luxenberg’s mother had been 23, not four, when Annie was committed. To the shame of being poor was added the stigma of having a sister in a state institution because they couldn’t afford anything better. She wanted a different future, and to achieve this she believed she would have to bury her sister and her own childhood; she began to deny Annie’s existence completely, telling people she was an only child.

As Luxenberg slowly uncovers Annie’s story, he realizes that by exposing one ghost, he exposes thousands; by discovering one secret, he discovers those of his entire family. The author calls on his investigative reporting skills not just to uncover the facts, but toexplore what happens when lies or omissions become truth, exposing the contradictions, contrasts and parallels that exist within every life, every relationship and every family. Beautifully complex, raw and revealing.