Through a Glass, Darkly: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Solve the Greatest Mystery of All Time

Stefan Bechtel

ISBN 10: 125007679X / ISBN 13: 9781250076793

Edité par St Martin's Press, 2017

A propos de cet article

After the American Civil War, the movement known as Spiritualism began to sweep across America as thousands of people, mostly from shock and grief, tried to make contact with the recently departed. The movement captivated Europe as well, especially England in the aftermath of the Great War and Great Influenza Epidemic.

N° de réf. du vendeur 00099943100

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Through a Glass, Darkly: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Solve the Greatest Mystery of All Time
• Éditeur: St Martin's Press
• Date de parution: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 125007679X
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781250076793
• Reliure: Hardback
• État de l'article: Fair

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

2018 ASJA Award-Winner in the Biography/History Category

Is it possible to make direct contact with the dead? Do the departed seek to make contact with us? The conviction that both things are true was the cornerstone of spiritualism, a kind of do-it-yourself religion that swept the Western world from the 1850s to the 1930s. Prominent artists and poets, prime ministers and scientists, all joined hands around the séance table. But the movement's most famous spokesman by far was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose public quarrels with Houdini over the truth of spiritualism made headlines across the country.

Known to the world as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had undergone what many considered an enigmatic transformation, turning his back on the hyper-rational Holmes and plunging into the supernatural. What was it that convinced a brilliant man, the creator of the great exemplar of cold, objective thought, that there was a reality beyond reality?

Though most modern sources make Conan Doyle out to be a kindly but credulous old fool, and though the spiritualist era was rife with fraud, Stefan Bechtel and Laurence Roy Stains take a closer look. They reexamine the old records of trance mediums and séances, and they discover that what Conan Doyle and his colleagues uncovered is as difficult to dismiss now as it was then.

À propos de l'auteur

STEFAN BECHTEL is the author or co-author of twelve books, including Mr. Hornaday's War and Redemption Alley, which have sold more than two million copies and been translated into ten languages. His work has appeared in Esquire, The Washington Post, and other publications. Bechtel and Stains met in 1985 while working on the star-up team that created Men's Health.

LAURENCE ROY STAINS has been the editor of Philadelphia Magazine and the founding editor of New Shelter. He has written for national publications, including The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post. He is an associate professor of journalism at Temple University.