Best known for his writings on popular science and mathematics and as a skeptical commentator of the paranormal, Gardner has penned this collection of essays and book reviews that tackles every subject from the Wandering Jew legend and Buckley’s religious convictions to astrology and word play. From the Publisher For over fifty years Martin Gardner has been writing witty, entertaining, and highly intelligent articles on an amazing range of topics. Best known for his works on popular science and mathematics, and as an incisive skeptical commentator on the paranormal, Gardner is also an accomplished writer of children’s literature, a novelist, and essayist on religion and philosophy. This collection of essays and book reviews demonstrates the extent of Gardner’s interests. Besides the legend of the Wandering Jew, and Bill Buckley’s religious convictions, Gardner takes on the subjects of astrology, psychic surgery, word play in the stories of L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz), and the history of a forgotten children’s magazine. There are also reviews of books by astronomer Carl Sagan, philosopher Paul Edwards, and science fiction writer H. G. Wells, along with commentary on mathematics, Lewis Carroll, chess, Christian Science, science fads, and more. Longtime Gardner fans and intellectually curious newcomers will welcome this stimulating collection by one of America’s most brilliant essayists. From Publishers Weekly Over his several decades of writing, Gardner has accomplished so much it’s hard to believe there’s just one of him. His 60-odd books have explained complex science and math, dissected UFOs and pseudoscience, analyzed and admired Alice in Wonderland, answered everyday questions about technology and collected 25 years of contributions to Scientific American’s column Mathematical Games. This compilation of previously published work adds postscripts and restores editorial cuts to 29 short essays and book reviews, reprinted from Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, Discover, the Los Angeles Times Book Review and elsewhere. Many pieces attack religious fundamentalists and claims of the supernatural, like the purported psychic surgeons from the Philippines. A three-part series examines the Seventh-Day Adventists and their breakaway sects, who set dates, since expired, for the apocalypse (the first Christians apparently did the same). Also in Gardner’s sights are TV evangelists, Buckley’s brand of Christianity and social constructionist theories of science and math. Readers who share Gardner’s sentiments on all these matters may find his debunking essays repetitive, but they will turn with gratitude to his appreciations. The best of the essays and book reviews here are praise–for unjustly forgotten children’s author and editor John Martin, for L. Frank Baum of Oz fame, for science-fiction editor and popular-science writer Hugo Gernsback, for H.G. Wells and for sharp-tongued Catho