Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of The Sky Is Not the Limit, asks, "What would it take to create a world in which fantasy is not confused for fact and public policy is based on objective reality? I don't know for sure. But a good place to start would be for everyone on Earth to read this book."

In a starred review, Booklist called 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True "a valuable, not to mention very entertainingly written, addition to the literature of skepticism" that "deserves to be shelved alongside the works of such giants of the field as Randi, Shermer, Kurtz, and Nickell." One of those cited giants, Michael Shermer, calls it "the perfect book for skeptics to carry with them whenever they venture into the dark and mysterious realms where myths, monsters, and magic lurk as pretenders to truth, and where pseudoscience and superstition rule the day."

In this down-to-earth, entertaining exploration of some of contemporary culture's most commonly held claims, veteran journalist Guy Harrison--author of 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God and Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity--not only disproves unfounded beliefs, but presents alternative scientific explanations whenever possible.

Listen to Harrison on his recent appearance on the Strange Frequencies Radio podcast. 

Why do so many members of our sophisticated society believe in assertions that scientists have roundly and almost unanimously rejected? And what does expressing such beliefs mean for the lives of those who do?

Unlike many books on the paranormal, which are focused on exposing or verifying ghosts, psychics, communicating with the dead, UFOs, angels, ESP, astrology, and similiar phenomena, in The Paranormal: Who Believes, Why They Believe, and Why It Matters, author Erich Goode--Sociology Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University and author of ten books--is interested in explaining paranormal belief as a sociological phenomenon.

"It's easy enough to make fun of bizarre claims about the paranormal and supposed alternative realities, from UFOs and astrology to ghost hunting and pseudoprophecy," says Philip Jenkins, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. "What Goode has done, though, is to examine such claims seriously from the point of view of an experienced sociologist, showing how [such] deviant ideas arise and spread. This highly readable and rewarding book tells us a great deal about the mass media and our educational system, and how contradictory ways of understanding the world coexist so uneasily in a postmodern society."

Nachman Ben-Yehuda, professor of sociology and former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Hebrew University says that "such an integrated and significant approach [to paranormal beliefs] has never been presented before. Goode offers truly fresh insights and a persuasive new perspective... It is the one book you simply must read if you really want to know and understand what the paranormal is all about."