Old Souls: Compelling Evidence from Children Who Remember Past Lives Paperback – July 10, 2001

First, I have to say that several of the reviewers have said that somewhere on the cover it was stated that this book provided PROOF of reincarnation, and they then rated this book poorly for not providing such iron-clad proof. After reading these reviews, I studied the cover once again, trying to find where it states that any proof will be given - yet, there's no such statement ANYWHERE! What it states is that they will provide "compelling evidence" - and in my opinion they have achieved this goal."Old Souls" discusses some of those cases suggestive of reincarnation that Dr. Ian Stephenson had investigated during his career. These cases are found all over the world, but this book tends to discuss only those found in Lebanon, India, and a few in the US. Much of the info. provided tends to be clinical in a sense, but one has to remember that Dr. Stephenson is trying to pursue this from a scientific point of view - in an effort to bring this sort of research into the mainstream.The author, Thomas Shroder, is a journalist skeptic who followed Dr. Stephenson on the last few of his journeys. I must say that it's hard at times to read how the skeptics view the evidence, as it seems to show without a doubt the saying that believers don't need extraordinary proof, but to the skeptic, no proof is good enough. However, by the end, this skeptic was at least left wondering - not willing to deny everything he saw and heard - at least thats a start...Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in spirituality in general, and more specifically reincarnation. It provides an excellent view into the research, and how & why the skeptics tend to rip it apart.

...from the core subject and consider now how the information was gathered. Normally you'd think research to be dull - plodding through libraries, speaking to hundreds of people and cross-checking the results.What Tom Schroder's book does is show the dangerous side to this work as well. What do you do when a village of angry men show up to an interview? How do you track down that elusive autopsy report when the bureaucrats are corrupt, indifferent or simply overwhelmed by wars and civil unrest? How do you keep going when a journey of 40 miles can take six hours due to appalling traffic conditions?Old Souls tells the story behind the story, the dedication of one man, Dr Ian Stevenson, to present evidence of reincarnation that is scrupulously meticulous as well as rigorously investigated and documented. Sometimes a scientific pursuit is not pretty but Schroder has been honest about all the conditions, including his own self doubts.This was a fascinating read.

I personally found this book very interesting. It delves into personalities claiming memories of past lives, sometimes with uncanny accuracy and sometimes with vague memories. Throughout the world there are populaces that embrace reincarnation while others totally reject the idea as absurd. For years, Dr. Ian Stevenson has expended countless hours and energy in trying to establish a foothold in the mainstream scientific community. The author of this work accompanied him on several trips and independently sought answers to the existence or nonexistence o of reincarnation. The topic is interesting at the least and deserving of continuing exploration. For me, many questions remain unanswered and yet there is definitely some factor that causes me to feel uneasy about entirely dismissing the existence of reincarnation. As with much in life, the answer may never definitively reveal itself.

I was hoping for more data, case studies. It’s more a travel biography. Frankly, I got bored and didn’t finish.

I bought 'Old Souls' because I have an interest in reincarnation, but wanted a book that approaches the subject from a more scientific point of view, which 'Old Souls' does. The book is based on journalist Tom Shroder's journeys with Dr. Ian Stevenson in Lebanon and India to seek out promisingly verifiable accounts of young children who appeared to remember past lives in some detail. Shroder's task as a journalist was to observe Stevenson and his interactions with the children and their families, to try to discern whether or not the children's stories truly could be believed, or were there to be debunked. (As it turned out, there were, with reservations, some of both.)The first half of the book was about Lebanon, and the second about India. During that first half, the question of reincarnation was uppermost in my mind, even in the face of Shroder's vivid descriptions of war-demolished and sometimes dangerous Beirut. When I started reading the second half of the book, however, the part about India, the issue of reincarnation faded far into the background for me when compared with the grip that Schroder's description of the living conditions in India had on me. It made me wonder why anyone would want to have even one life in those utterly miserable surroundings, much less more. Four words pretty much sum up what I garnered from Shroder's description of India: "raw sewage," "flies" and "malnutrition."Another question raised in my mind by the second half of 'Old Souls' was why on earth Dr. Ian Stevenson would keep going back to India to interview these children, knowing the horrendous conditions he would sometimes have to suffer right along with them. It's one thing to be highly interested in a subject; it's completely another to be willing to make repeated journeys into a veritable hell in order to conduct research you well know may never be given a fair look by mainstream scientists. Stevenson reminds me somewhat of people who try to climb Mount Everest; I greatly respect and admire them and think they are more than a little crazy. I'm so glad that Schroder wrote this book to chronicle Dr. Stevenson's story and that of the 'old souls' that he studied. The world truly does deserve to know.P.S. I do want to be sure to point out that Tom Shroder writes wonderfully well. He describes what he sees in vivid detail, and he also is generous in sharing his own emotional reactions and insights into what he sees. I ordered another book written by him simply because I so enjoyed his prose in 'Old Souls.'