Rating: 
Summary: An Inportant Book For All Faiths
Review: This book discusses the reincarnation evidence collected by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. It is necessary reading for all believers in God.
Today, some religions, most physical scientists, and most biologists do not believe in reincarnation because they believe that our world comes to an end. Religions speak of this end with their studies of eschatology. And, physical scientists and biologists speak of this end as the result of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Unfortunately, such religions, physical scientists, and biologists are obviously unaware of modern discoveries that would change their beliefs. One discovery is by Nicholas of Cusa. He proves that our world is finite and thus that its origin must be an infinite thing. The second discovery is by Georg Cantor. He proves that two infinities exist -- a completed infinity and an uncompleted infinity. These two discoveries tell us (1) that God created our world (2) that God is a completed infinity, (3) that our world is an uncompleted infinity, and (4) that God and our world are eternal. Reincarnation is consistent with these discoveries.
Further, physicists have not found the atoms of our world. To search for the atoms, they are developing string theories. But, all strings are finite and can thus be divided endlessly. So, string theories will not expose the atoms of our world. They are also developing a world theory known as the Big Bang theory. They claim that our world has its origin in a physical thing that explodes. But, they have no proof of this physical thing. Today, these atomic and world theories are merely imaginations of physicists who reject God as the origin of our world.
A spiritual atom was found by Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century. Since they are immortal, they can be created and destroyed only by God, just as energy in our world cannot be created and destroyed. Some of thee spiritual atoms are human souls. They are thus eternal are reincarnate. So, this book is very important. If this book is reprinted, I hope an index is included for scientists.
Currently, I am writing a book that will discuss the new discoveries above and the spiritual atoms. My book will identify man's new responsibilities to God under reincarnation.
Rating: 
Summary: Runs but never fisinshes the race.
Review: This book is a compilation of the author's thoughts. It is like he is thinking out loud. It tells a lot about everything but never ties it into the "final" thought or ending of the author's exploration. Leaves you knowing as much as before you read it.
Rating: 
Summary: More a travelogue than about reincarnation, but a good book
Review: This book is Tom Shroder's, a journalist, recounting his following Ian Stevenson's investigation into the possible instances of reincarnation in children in Beirut, India and the United States.THIS BOOK IS MORE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THESE TRIPS THAN SPECIFIC INFORMATION ON REINCARNATION AND PROOFS OF IT:
Tom Shroder's writing was excellent. Please do not misunderstand this. He also does Ian Stevenson's dedication justice. This is a true stoic dedicated to his science. However, I did find there was more detail about the process than the end product, proof or disproof, or hintings of reincarnation. There was detailed descriptions of the conditions of buildings and conditions in Lebanon, of the translated conversations, of the squalor and din of India and of the abject poverty of the people. However, I felt a major lack of discussion of the protocol that was attempted (or not attempted, field work is an inexact science). I also found little explanation for some of the theory to date. I don't understand the significance of birthmarks. I can understand the curiousity factor, but hardly see this as hard scientific proof. THE BOOK IS ARRANGED BY LOCATION:
The book discusses the individual cases grouped chronologically, what was investigated each day and where. For this reason, there is a Beirut, India and US section. I was unimpressed with the consistency of the questions (given that we had so many details on the conversations) and the rigor, this does not do Ian Stevenson any justice and may make him look less than professional. I do understand where these things could go by the way side, but it seems they were dispensed with upfront. Maybe Tom Shroder did not want to make the book overly heavy with the science of the investigations. This was particularly light with Tom Shroder's handling of the US case, that Stevenson could not. It was more of a curiosity seeker's description, than an investigative report. Ironically though, there was more than a page and a half describing the parents drive for success and details of their business and health problems. Then he said their identities were being concealed. So either this revealed more than the subject preferred or was pure fabrication? I understand where the writer wanted to assure the reader of the believability of the parents and the uniqueness of the child's birth, but this was a bit too detailed. This book suffered from too much detail in some areas and not enough in others. For this the editor of this book takes equal responsibility. THIS BOOK GAVE AN EXCELLENT ACCOUNTING OF THE FRUSTRATIONS WITH INFORMATION GATHERING:
One thing this book did was give a face and a sense to the number of people and trials it takes to get this type of information. Also the dogged hard work. Wow! Assuming progress, one can only imagine the hardships that Dr. Ian Stevenson ran into on his previous visits to India and Beirut. AN INTERESTING POINT OF VIEW WAS BROUGHT UP BY THE AUTHOR:
In the the countries of Lebanon and India with the groups being interviewed, reincarnation is a part of their beliefs. It is a given in their eyes and they feel it does not need to be proven. It is welcome when it happens. Here in the West it is considered mumbo-jumbo and to try to prove it is considered ridiculous, a waste of money that could go to hard science. Not a situation a scientist would like to be in. This is a Catch 22 type of situation. Kind of like trying to prove the Earth was round some years ago. Sheer heresy. THE AUTHOR ALSO MADE A VERY GOOD POINT AT THE END:
When you are scientist trying to prove a theory from the outputs only, it can be like a 2-dimensional creature trying to perceive a 3-dimensional object. We humans are like that, we can understand and put our heads around 3-dimensional objects and understand them. But, if you consider time as a 4th dimension, we are not trully equipped. Great analogy. We are not really seeing the big picture and may physically not be able to. We need to understand first our relationship with time and all the other facets that lead up to reincarnation before we can truly understand it. IN SUMMARY:
This book was good, if you wanted to see the day-to-day fact gathering. Also I think it pointed out interesting observations of the different ways of lives in other countries. I'm not being sly when I suggest Tom Shroder would do an excellent job writing a travelogue. I enjoyed that part quite a bit. He took the physical risks I'm not willing to, to describe the experiences of going to these places. He did a great job describing them.
I do wish this book had more fundamental points and science in it. I think to get that you really need Dr. Stevenson's publications. However, Mr. Shroder is an excellent writer recounting details and a laymen's view point of some of the facts he was observing. It is the way most of us would see it. I gave it a 4 because I was expecting a bit more scientific book.
From the account on back cover, I was expecting this.
It received a 4 because it was excellently written. I will watch for books from Tom Shroder again.
Rating: 
Summary: Mystery book ???
Review: This book is written like a murder mystery, not a scientific book on evidence for past lives as the cover indicates.
The first chapter opening sentences are as follows:
"It is late, nearly lightless. Smoke freom a million dung fires hang in the headlights as the Maruti microbus bangs along the narrow, cratered hardpack .....".
The first 6 chapters are all written like this, I couldn't take any more and threw the book aside. I wanted clean documented evidence with pro's and con's discussed about each case, not a detailed narative about the travels of Tom Shroder.
The title is misleading, it's a travel diary !!
Rating:
Summary: Science Takes a Look at Reincarnation
Review: This is a chatty book by a man who writes "lifestyle" pieces for a living. He accompanies Ian Stevenson to Lebanon and then to India to follow up some reincarnation stories. Dr. Stevenson has been doing such investigations for many years, is 79 years old, and will probably hang up his tape recorder after these two trips. He is a physician and psychiatric researcher at the University of Virginia, where for 40 years he has been studying reincarnation, primarily as a field anthropologist would, by traveling the world and taking down likely stories, as accurately as he can, and using as many witnesses as are available. There are many cultures - in India, of course, but also among the Druse of Lebanon, the Buddhists of Southeast Asia, and some Northwest Indians of the U.S. - where reincarnation is part of their view of the world. In these areas it is common for a child to claim a past life, usually of some recently dead person in his or her own culture, but not always. Many of these stories can be easily explained by "naturalistic" means. (For example, a desire to believe in a child's spontaneous knowledge of the stranger he claims to have been suppresses the parents' memory of a situation where he could have learned details of that person's life.) But some of them cannot, or cannot without the kinds of contortions that make the naturalistic explanation as incredible as a supernatural one. It is these latter kinds of claims that interest Dr. Stevenson. He tries to find situations that are as "clean" as possible, ideally with little children (who are poor liars) claiming past lives that had no connection with them or their families, thus minimizing the possibility that they learned the things they know by unconsciously absorbing conversations around them. He tries, moreover, to find situations that do not work to the advantage of the child or his parents, as when someone claims to be the reincarnation of a poor person, rather than of a rich one. Yet accurate accounts are very hard to get: memories are confused; cross-cultural misunderstandings add to the confusion; hostility to arrogant Westerners (although Stevenson personally is a mild-mannered sort) may stir the pot. Still, Stevenson does what he can. One way science proceeds is by accumulations of humble but hard facts: enough of them may suggest patterns that may suggest a theory. He would dearly love some attention to his work from the scientific community. Someone has to come at these reincarnation phenomena from a different direction: anecdotal evidence has to be combined with independent perspectives if we are to be able to say anything about these stories but "wow". OK, fine. Tom Shroder wrote this book as a reporter, going along for the ride and bringing a typical First-World skepticism with him. He had become intrigued with Dr. Stevenson's work, and persuaded the old man to bring along a possibly-unsympathetic observer. But Stevenson had nothing to lose: he was not riding a wave of enthusiasm for reincarnation research, but just honestly hoping someone would help him explain the inexplicable. Thus begins the journey of the quietly passionate old man and the bumptious reporter. The reporter definitely gets the lion's share of the ink in this book. His discomforts, fears, alternations of wonder and suspicion, plus his need to entertain put Stevenson into the background. But the past life experiences of the people are the point, after all, and on this Shroder does pretty well. Sometimes the barrage of similar-sounding foreign names makes it difficult to remember who is who and who was who, but I got a pretty good sense of the character of some typical cases. I think the author deserves credit for bringing this work to the attention of a wider public. The world is more mysterious than we can know, but perhaps it's time some mysteries were promoted to problems.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: This is a fascinating first-hand account by the journalist who accompanied Dr. Stevenson on his visits to (and interviews with) individuals claiming to remember past lives. I found it to possess that perfect combination (that I always hope to find when I open a non-fiction work!) of eye-opening material and highly readable style. And, by the way, the cases are HIGHLY convincing! This is a must-read for any layman interested in the subject of reincarnation.
Rating:
Summary: A Sober Glimpse Of A Possiblility
Review: This is not a book for true believers who are already convinced and simply want a good read with plenty of dramatic case studies confirming what they already "know." Nor is it a cynical examination by a die-hard skeptic. It is a work written by an author with an open mind attempting to grapple with a topic that humanity has wrestled with for millenia: whether this life is all there is. If the answer were so obvious either way, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Bertrand Russell once wrote that we have wars over religion more than we argue over whether 2+2=4, and I think the question is not resolved here. Could you see the headlines? "WRITER PROVES REINCARNATION FACT! Story on page 5."
Rating:
Summary: Forget it
Review: This is one of the worst so called "scientific books" that I have read on reincarnation. The book is full of flowery anecdotes detailing his travels through Lebanon and India. I could hardly read through the descriptive paragraphs in order to read what he had experienced while traveling with Dr. Ian Stevenson. This book seemed more like a fiction novel than a "Scientific Evidence of Past Lives". I was very disappointed in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and delightfully agenda-free
Review: Tom Shroder has done us all a great service with "Old Souls." He is an evocative writer who, in my view, hits just the right note, neither blindly accepting nor summarily dismissing the remarkable -- but, often, aggravatingly flawed -- cases that he and Prof. Stevenson encounter. And unlike another reviewer here, I enjoyed the 'travelogue' aspects of the book nearly as much as the exploration of reincarnation -- if Schroder wants to write a straight travel book next time, sign me up!
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating and Well-Written Book
Review: Tom Shroder's OLD SOULS is a well-written and compelling book dealing with a still mysterious and controversial subject: children who believe they have lived before. Far from being a dry academic research project documenting cases textbook fashion, this book draws the reader along with the author on a fascinating adventure. Shroder's descriptions of the cultural flavor of both Lebanon and India, his vivid impressions and sometimes alarming experiences, keep the reader well-involved and continually questioning the evidence. At no point is the reader led to believe Shroder has any agenda except to report on his experiences as he accompanies Ian Stevenson, a professor from the University of Virginia, for what is perhaps Stevenson's last visit to Lebanon and India to reinvestigate claimants of reincarnation. There are varying degrees of how convincing each case is, but even for one who does not subscribe to the belief of reincarnation, there are other cases that are exceptionally compelling. Photographs lend added credibility to some individual cases. No matter where one stands on the subject, OLD SOULS is a thought-provoking and thoroughly digestible inquiry into an unsettling phenomenon. Tom Shroder did a very masterful job on this book.
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