The Truth About Uri Geller

By Stefan Isaksson

The Truth About Uri Geller
James Randi
Prometheus Books
235 pages
ISBN: 0879751991

Are there people out there who still believe that Uri Geller – the famous Israeli spoon-bender and mindreader – possesses some sort of paranormal abilities and that the entire scientific community is flabbergasted each time he performs some of his trademark oddities?

Well, unfortunately yes. Because, apparently, not all have had the pleasure of reading James Randi’s book The Truth About Uri Geller. Because after you’ve done that you don’t have too many reasons left to believe Geller is some sort of paranormal guru. Now this is not the first book I’ve read written by a skeptic and published by Prometheus Books, but I doubt that I’ve ever read a book that more efficiently exposes so-called paranormal claims. Randi, a professional magician and illusionist, shows just as effectively as humorously (yes, he has a great sense of humor, especially when he turns sarcastic) how Geller isn’t any different from traditional magicians and illusionists, except that he claims to do it the paranormal way. In other words, whatever Geller does has been done before, and the bending of spoons and reading of minds happens every day for your average magician. The difference is that Geller refuses to change his mind about his paranormal abilities. Randi willingly admits that there’s nothing paranormal at all in his work, and he’s able to duplicate every single act that Geller does.

Geller is very skilled at his trade, no question about it, and if tens of thousands of people all over the world are amused by his performances, then why criticize him? Well, just like Randi says again and again, there’s a huge difference between being an ordinary magician and perform mysterious – but honest – feats and making large sums of money by claiming to be something you’re not. Magic, as done by Randi et.al, is all about fooling people, that’s true, but what Geller does is exploiting peoples’ gullibility to the extreme. And there’s nothing honest in fooling people into believing things that have proven to be untrue.

One of the highlights of the book comes on page 151, where an article from Hebrew magazine Haloam Hazeh is published in its entirety. This article, which has never before been available in English, clearly shows how Geller has been a hoaxer from the start. It’s a real eye-opener.

It’s quite fascinating to see how the phenomenon Uri Geller has been treated by the media, especially in the West. Randi gives numerous examples of how magazines have refused to publish negative and exposing articles about Geller, and it’s clearly shown how people think and act in a certain way that confirms their already made up minds. People have a tendency to see what they want and expect to see, and rarely has this been demonstrated better than in The Truth About Uri Geller.

The only negative thing about the book is the truly worthless quality of the photographs. This is extremely unfortunate, since they are there to demonstrate how Geller performs his so-called “paranormal” feats. It boggles my mind that not more effort was put into this.

Better images would have resulted in this great book becoming an excellent book.