“This is an excellent book. As well as being carefully researched and theoretically interesting, it is also engaging, witty, and thoughtful. Writing in an easy, contemplative style, Kripal is never less than rigorous and wide-ranging; he doesn’t get mired in statistics or parapsychological analysis, but instead, drawing on religious studies and cultural analysis, he explores key ideas and thinkers in their respective contexts. In the process, the reader is introduced to the largely rejected knowledge of the psychical, the sacred is resurrected in the paranormal, and lazy skepticism is challenged. Authors of the Impossible will contribute significantly to the intelligent, open-minded study of the sacred, while Kripal will, I suspect, become a key figure in the development of new trajectories in the study of religion.”

Christopher Partridge, Lancaster University

“Jeffrey Kripal’s new book represents a serious intellectual challenge to the epistemological assumptions that govern the work of scientists and religion scholars alike. He demands nothing short of a paradigm shift in order to make sense of the odd, the anomalous, and the inexplicable. All of this he calls the impossible—the paranormal situations in which thought forms are said to become physical realities and the future to morph into the present and past. Kripal is no fluffy believer; he argues incisively and in detail in ways that seek to shake our materialist and rational foundations at their base, so that our defensive walls come tumbling down.”

Catherine L. Albanese, University of California, Santa Barbara

“This is a quietly earth-shattering project that constitutes a logical next step in the development of Kripal’s thinking over the course of his career and grows directly out of Esalen. In Kripal we have a classic Romantic thinker/writer who is formulating—in a conscious meld of the subjective and objective that is the hallmark of Romantic writing—his own distinctive and highly original Biographia Spiritualis.”

Victoria Nelson, author of The Secret Life of Puppets

"This is another in a series of outstanding and almost certainly controversial contributions to the academic study of religion by Kripal. . . .  Kripal has one of the most distinctive, interesting voices in the humanities today and has promise to revitalize and extend the reach of religious studies."

Choice

"There is much value to be gleaned from Kripal’s close reading of the four paranormal writers he examines. For scholars interested in giving paranormal belief its due, that reason alone is sufficient to ensure that Authors of the Impossible will remain an important yet controversial foray into the academic study of the so-called unexplained."

Justin Mullis | AIPT Comics