Book 10 - Flim Flam By James Randi

A short book detailing many examples of psychics, dowsers, mediums and countless others who claim to hold amazing abilities. And their intense failures.

Randi is known world wide as The Skeptic. Once a magician, he has turned his knowledge of misdirection and trickery to uncovering those who use such talents not for entertainment, but to claim mystical abilities. The book details some of Randi's bigger encounters, exposes some of the more prolific technquies used by these people and demonstrates Randis famous cash prize. Its a very interesting read at times.

The issues I had with it were twofold, the first isnt Randi's fault and I dont hold it against the book. The book was written a while ago. This comes through alot in the writing obviously and obviously all the targets he examines in the book are dated. This didnt detract from the book really, and was more just me being a dong.

Second though, Randi is not a writer. Some parts of the book were difficult to grasp at first scan and more than once it was hard to make out the meanings of his awkward sentences. This is still a minor issue, it doesn't come up much.

The exploration of the media's attitude toward mystics was pretty interesting, and all the more relivent these days with the New Age focus on things, and the media is still going on about mystics and Ghosts and so on.

A good read if you're interested in the subject, though I'd suggest seeking out a more recent book.