A gem of a book.
The author hooks you in with the crazy but true story of a premonitions bureau, a place that collects premonitions and then watches to see if any come true.
He then proceeds to basically do a biography of a psychiatrist who came up with the idea. The psychiatrist also dabbled in aversion therapy and the idea of whether or not it is possible to be scared to death.
Meanwhile, the do tor’s partner in this somewhat kooky endeavor is a reporter who is one of the leading writers on NASA and the space race.
A bizarre but charming combination ( )

Interesting thesis and idea and amazing research… but the writing is… not good. ( )

Interesting concepts and characters a fascinating subject, plus very good writing - but something here just doesn't work. The title is misleading; this is not really a story about the Premonitions Bureau but instead a look at so many things, very few of which really consider the legitimacy of premonitions. ( )

In the late 1960s, British psychiatrist John Barker became fascinated by premonitions, and, with Peter Fairley, started a Premonitions Bureau - a sort of clearinghouse for prophecies and premonitions from around the country. He wondered if disasters - like the Aberfan coal tip, plane crashes, fires, train derailments - could be avoided with this early warning system. Over a few years, only about three percent of the predictions were accurate, and even then, they were not specific enough to avert any catastrophe, and could only be matched up after the fact. Sam Knight digs into the history of Barker and the hospital where he worked (Shelton, in Shrewsbury), the premonitions bureau and some of its best "percipients," various theories of time, and Barker's own early demise.

Unusual, interesting.

Quotes

It can be very difficult, even in the moment that something noticeable is happening, to separate an event from the meaning that we choose to give it. With time, once an unlikely occurrence is incorporated into the story of a life, or a death, it becomes almost impossible to see the alternative possibilities that once existed. (56)

Premonitions are impossible, and they come true all the time. (71)

When we stop seeing where things are going, we cease to be ourselves. It is human to think ahead. (76)

The difference between science and madness is correcting your explanation when it doesn't map on to the world. (102)

...Barker...gave credence and attention to men and women whose illusions had not been previously taken seriously. (134)

We see the world as our community sees it. We are drawn into each other's scheme of things. (143)

There was no vision without a disaster to see. (149)

The free energy principle drives our memories, intuition and expectations to generate the smoothest experience of reality as it hits us....seeing things before they happen is how we, as mortal souls, can seek to slow down time. (154)

Part of tragedy is the certainty by which it proceeds and how we interrogate our choices as it does so. (223)

Like Barker, [George] Engel wanted to expand the frontiers of psychiatry and to pay more attention to the physiological impact of our emotions. (234)

"Nocebo effect"

...A warning doesn't bring it about. The future is already there. (236) ( )

It seems like with every major disaster, there are people who claim to have had a premonition that something was going to happen. I enjoyed this historical account of a psychiatrist who joined forces with a journalist in a project to collect people's premonitions in order to see how many come true. The author does a good job discussing coincidence and other factors that can create a false impression that an actual premonition has come true. However, there are enough anecdotes about truly uncanny perceptions as to make one wonder.