Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural Hardcover - 2008

by Jim Steinmeyer

The seminal biography of the twentiethcentury's premier chronicler of theparanormal, Charles Fort a man whosevery name gave rise to an adjective,fortean, to describe the unexplained.

By the early 1920s, Americans were discovering that theworld was a strange place.

Charles Fort could demonstrate that it was even strangerthan anyone suspected. Frogs fell from the sky. Blood rainedfrom the heavens. Mysterious airships visited the Earth. Dogstalked. People disappeared. Fort asked why, but, even more vexing,he also asked why we weren't paying attention.

Here is the first fully rendered literary biography of the manwho, more than any other figure, would define our idea of theanomalous and paranormal. In Charles Fort: The Man WhoInvented the Supernatural, the acclaimed historian of stage magicJim Steinmeyer goes deeply into the life of Charles Fort as hesaw himself: first and foremost, a writer.

At the same time, Steinmeyer tells the story of an era inwhich the certainties of religion and science were being turnedon their heads. And of how Fort significantly was the firstman who challenged those orthodoxies not on the grounds ofsome counter-fundamentalism of his own but simply for theplainest of reasons: they didn't work. In so doing, Fort gavevoice to a generation of doubters who would neither accept the'straight story' of scholastic science nor credulously embracefantastical visions. Instead, Charles Fort demanded of his readersand admirers the most radical of human acts: Thinking.