{"id":4378,"date":"2008-04-20T02:51:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-20T08:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4378"},"modified":"2010-02-22T17:40:10","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T23:40:10","slug":"book-report-strange-but-true-mysterious-and-bizarre-people-by-thomas-slemen-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/20\/book-report-strange-but-true-mysterious-and-bizarre-people-by-thomas-slemen-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Strange But True: Mysterious and Bizarre People by Thomas Slemen (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I hoped the book would be a good idea book for historical essays.  However, the &#8220;But True&#8221; part was overstated.  Maybe it would be a good book for fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy, ideas instead.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I should have guessed by page 43, in a piece about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Springheeled_Jack\" target=\"_blank\">Springheeled Jack<\/a>, where the sentence &#8220;But one theory that does fit the facts is the alien hypothesis.&#8221; appears.  Prior to that, we&#8217;ve got some interesting historical anecdotes which might provide fodder for historical research and some &#8220;Hmmmmm&#8221; essays, but this piece on the English folklore tips the author&#8217;s hand: he&#8217;s ready to accept the Fortean and the <i>Fate<\/i> magazinean as &#8220;true&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s not what I was looking for in this book.  Don&#8217;t get me wrong; I&#8217;ve read many of the anthologies of the mysteries of the unexplained (Reader&#8217;s Digest, of course), but I was hoping for something more, um, proveable from this book.  Not (from p311-312, in the chapter &#8220;The Green Children&#8221; which doesn&#8217;t provide much more data than the Reader&#8217;s Digest book and lacks the black and white reimaginative photo) &#8220;The only credible explanations seem to point to extraterrestrial life or a parallel world.&#8221;  Not (from p370, the chapter &#8220;Doppelgangers&#8221;, which comes after the chapter &#8220;Vampires&#8221; and the chapter about the intelligent life on the moon) &#8220;Until scientists can open their minds to the reality of the doppelganger, societies will continue to live in fear of this phenomenon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some of the things prove interesting food for thought and speculation (Was Edgar Allan Poe a murderer?  Who was Prester John?  What about that song by Reszo Seress?), but ultimately I was a tad disappointed that the material skewed speculative fiction instead of speculative historical fact.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how much more I can explain that.  I did, however, read the book.  Whether fiction comes of it or not remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=1854876945&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hoped the book would be a good idea book for historical essays. However, the &#8220;But True&#8221; part was overstated. Maybe it would be a good book for fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy, ideas instead. I guess I should have guessed by page 43, in a piece about Springheeled Jack, where the sentence &#8220;But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5614,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions\/5614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}