"A compelling biography. . . . This well-researched account uses Mack's personal journals, archives, and notes, along with interviews of close friends and family members, to capture the full picture of Mack's life and genius."—Marissa Mace, Library Journal
"With his access to Mack's archives and other significant sources, Blumenthal's book is a significant insight into the man, his missions, and the controversies that followed them."—Bill Chalker, UFO Truth Magazine
"In this probing biography, Blumenthal, a former Times reporter, depicts Mack as a complex, deeply intelligent seeker, a man drawn equally to the mysteries of consciousness and the cosmos."—Gal Beckerman and Emily Eakin, New York Times Book Review
"Drop all mention of the extraterrestrials and The Believer remains a riveting look at the psychology of how we come to believe things. Mack's abilities, his brilliance, flaws, hubris, and mania, are anatomized with sensitivity. Readers will close the book wiser than when they opened it and painfully aware of what they do not and perhaps can never know about Mack, about extraterrestrials, and about the nature of truth."—Simon Ings, The Times [London]
"Detailed, thoughtful, and entertaining. . . . Ralph Blumenthal is a sympathetic biographer and, perhaps, a kindred spirit."—Nick Pope, The Seminary Co-op Bookstore blog
"Based on fifteen years of research, interviews, and exclusive access to Mack's archival material, The Believer is the story of a brilliant man whose breadth of interests generated a lifetime of achievements. Believers will appreciate the book's extensive cosmic phenomena, and nonbelievers will find a unique chronicle of an unquenchable human spirit."—Amy O'Loughlin, Foreword Reviews
"An inherently fascinating biography that is a 'must read' for all dedicated UFOlogists."—Able Greenspan, Midwest Book Review
"This extraordinary biography reads like a fast-paced thriller. It deftly weaves the detailed richness of John Mack's genius and complex life through the historical backdrop of the alien-abduction phenomena. Ralph Blumenthal has so beautifully captured the essence of Mack's soul and his relentless curiosity that by the end of the book I mourned that Mack is no longer with us."—Trish MacGregor, coauthor of Aliens in the Backyard: UFO Encounters, Abductions, and Synchronicity
"As a person sane enough to hold a driver's license, I say, what are we to make of Mack's findings? Read this gripping, factual account of a mental-health pioneer and truth-seeker by a soundly accredited successful author, veteran New York Times foreign correspondent, and reporter. Decide for yourselves and then tell me!"—Dan Aykroyd
"Anyone who is intrigued by the involvement of John Mack, a psychiatrist on the faculty of Harvard, or by the interest of psychiatrists in the anomalous in general and UFOs in particular, should not miss reading this book! It is filled with details on the topic, both pro and con, that are not publicly available in any other place that I know."—David J. Hufford, author of The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions
"John Mack was one of the few prominent American intellectuals who saw and said what was, and still is, really at stake in the UFO phenomenon—reality itself. And Ralph Blumenthal is the perfect biographer to take up Mack and bring him to life, in all his humanity and complexity, on the page. A major achievement."—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
03/01/2021
Blumenthal (Miracle at Sing Sing), a former investigative reporter for the New York Times, has written a compelling biography of Dr. John E. Mack (1929–2004), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist who provided mental health care in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Mack's interests in alien abductions and alternate realities set him apart from his colleagues, but his defiance of scientific expectation in giving credibility to alien abductees' accounts was risky for an academic and a scientist. The story begins in June 1992 at a secretive Alien Discussions conference held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and proceeds to follow Dr. Mack on his mission to discover whether we have been misunderstanding the basic concept of reality all along. This well-researched account uses Mack's personal journals, archives, and notes, along with interviews of close friends and family members, to capture the full picture of Mack's life and genius. VERDICT Likely to appeal to those with an interest in mental health or the anomalous, this book tells the story of a man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge who "believed in taking risks and breaking boundaries to boldly explore the deepest secrets of existence, which no one yet has come close to fathoming."—Marissa Mace, Cumberland County P.L. & Information Ctr., Fayetteville, NC
