Interesting and entertaining rubbishing of various fraudsters and misguided souls who try and convince the public they have special powers. Starting with an account of Conan-Doyle and the photographs of fairies, and covering astrology, clairvoyance, dowsing, psi powers, the inevitable Uri Geller and more.

I'd read this before so it wasn't new but it is good to be reassured that people like Randi are around to debunk these kind of claims. It was quite interesting to read the chapter on biorythms: I remember these being fairly big years ago but they seem to have faded out now. Evidently when Randi wrote this book they were pretty popular.

I think perhaps Randi overdoes the "I'm open-minded" stuff: while he claims to be perfectly ready to believe in the possibility of supernormal powers if only someone can demonstrate them, he finishes the book with a fairly unequivocal damning of all those who claim such abilities.

Completed : 12-Sep-2006