Return to Life - by Jim B Tucker (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013.

Book Synopsis

A first-person account of Jim B. Tucker's experiences with a number of extraordinary children with memories of past lives, New York Times bestseller Return to Life expands on the international work started by his University of Virginia colleague Ian Stevenson. Tucker's work, lauded by the likes of parapsychologist Carol Bowman and Deepak Chopra, and described by some as quantum physics, focuses mostly on American cases, presenting each family's story and describing his scientific investigation. His goal is to determine what happened - what the child has said, how the parents have reacted, whether the child's statements match the life of a particular deceased person, and whether the child could have learned such information through normal means. Tucker has found case studies that provide persuasive evidence that some children do, in fact, possess memories of previous lives.

Among others, readers will meet a boy who describes a previous life on a small island. When Tucker takes him to that island, he finds that some details eerily match the boy's statements and some do not. Another boy points to a photograph from the 1930s and says he used to be one of the men in it. Once the laborious efforts to identify that man are successful, many of the child's numerous memories are found to match the details of his life. Soon after his second birthday, a third boy begins expressing memories of being a World War II pilot who is eventually identified.

Thought-provoking and captivating, Return to Life urges its readers, skeptics and supporters alike, to think about life, death, and reincarnation and to reflect about their own consciousness and spirituality.

Review Quotes

"In Return to Life, Jim Tucker painstakingly and meticulously documents the recycling of memories from beyond the barrier of physical death. He then rigorously offers a scientific theory to explain how our consciousness transcends space/time and is, hence, eternal. This book is an important milestone of an emerging scientific paradigm that suggests that consciousness conceives governs constructs and becomes the universe or perhaps multiple universes." --Deepak Chopra

"A breezy page-turner...Tucker presents these cases...with professioanlism and palpable respect." --Spirituality and Health

"Jim Tucker is a worthy successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson. He approaches these fascinating cases of children who appear to remember previous lives with an intelligent curiosity, sober judgment, and a real knack for telling a story, which is a good thing, because these are great stories." --Tom Shroder, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of Old Souls: Compelling Evidence from Children Who Remember Past Lives

"These incredible cases are not simply solid grounds for accepting some form of reincarnation into our Western worldview. These are heart-rending, poignant reminders that many of us do not quite 'fit' into the cultural and religious worlds into which we are born. Obviously, we are more than these worlds. Way, way more." --Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Authors of the Impossible: The Sacred and the Paranormal

"Researchers at the University of Virginia Medical School's Department of Perceptual Studies are studying reports from children around the world who claim to remember their past lives. More than 2,500 such reports have been analyzed by the Project's founder Ian Sevenson and several colleagues, among them Jim Tucker. Their work has immense implications for our understanding of the world and human nature, but has received relatively little attention from mainstream scientists and religious groups. Return to Life, like Dr. Tucker's previous book, Life Before Life, opens a door on this historic research. Even if you disagree with Tucker's brief speculations about the afterlife, you will get a good look at the kind of evidence for reincarnation that the University of Virginia team is assembling. It is astonishing to me that their work is not better known." --Michael Murphy, Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Esalen Institute, and co-author of God and the Evolving Universe

"With Return to Life, Dr. Jim B. Tucker has driven a very large nail in the coffin of materialism. This is an important contribution to the growing body of evidence that consciousness survives the death of the brain and body. The fear of death and annihilation has caused more suffering in human history than all the physical diseases combined. This book is a powerful antidote to that dread." --Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Great Consciousness and Why It Matters

"Return to Life comes as a resounding wake-up call regarding human existence. For decades, materialists have insisted that consciousness is nothing more than a function or emergent property of the brain. But the fact is that scientifically, the origins and nature of consciousness and its role in nature remain a mystery. The greatest obstacle to illuminating these issues through scientific discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion that we already have the answers. The empirical evidence that Dr. Tucker presents in this book challenges the reductionistic, metaphysical beliefs of scientific materialism. If his research methods are flawed, the scientific community should bring this to his and the public's attention. If they are irreproachable, then the empirical facts he reveals compel us to reassess even our most fundamental assumptions about consciousness, human nature, and the universe at large." --B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., President of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and author of Dreaming Yourself Awake

About the Author

JIM B. TUCKER, M.D. is Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is continuing the work of Ian Stevenson at the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies with children who report memories of previous lives. His first book on the research, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his family.