Future Perfect: A Skeptic’s Search for an Honest Mystic

This book bills itself as a skeptical inquiry into the murky world of contemporary psychics; unfortunately, it is anything but. Formless, pointless and self-indulgent, it wanders from one empty buzzword to another in search of meaning that proves, not surprisingly, elusive. Its chapters have no distinct titles (Chapter One is “Chapter One,” and so on), a warning sign that readers must find their own bearings in the amorphous, insipid hype it promulgates. “Chapter Fourteen” begins: “Manifestation is the principle that energies attract like energies. It’s part of the Law of Attraction, the belief that if your thoughts are positive, your experience will be too. It’s the elevator pitch of the film and subsequent book The Secret that everyone, led by Oprah, lost their minds over in 2006.” Read on if you care or dare to, but don’t expect much critical analysis. The author, whose “About the Author” information instructs us on how to pronounce her name (“LOO-STA-LOW,” in the French manner, I suppose), seems to lack any but the most narcissistic self-awareness, and her writing reads like a tediously elaborated consequence of prolonged exposure to Twitter, where she worked (surprise, surprise) as the global program manager for @TwitterMoments. Enough said.