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Rating: 
Summary: Smug, smarmy, misleading & affected. What a waste of time.
Review: I'm a researcher of various paranormal and conspiracy related subjects. Hats off to Madelbaum for an incredible weaving together of these seemingly diverse topics and for making their long interconnected history make perfect sense. He truly "gets it" and I recomend you get it... his book that is.
Rating: 
Summary: An introduction for newbies
Review: If I could give separate ratings to the parts of a book, I could.This book is about the interaction between military needs and paranormal ability, and purports to be a history thereof, reaching back to biblical days all the way to the present-day. On the whole, I've read worse (see my review of Psychic Warrior...interestingly, Mandelbaum goes into a few extra details about David Morehouse that I found illuminating). This book really hits its stride right after World War 2, when the U.S. government starts its secret research on ESP for military uses, concentrating on the use of clairvoyance (which the military calls "remote viewing"). He comes to some very interesting conclusions, particularly about current government research and use of remote viewing (summary: Yep.). Unfortunately, the first half of the book is, as far as I can tell, a complete and utter waste of tree pulp. I never get the impression that he's done any serious research on any of the pre-gunpowder era uses of magic or ESP. To be fair, there's very little evidence one way or another, but he treats anything and everything as hearsay, and notes that it couldn't possibly work. My other concern is that Mandelbaum is, to be blunt, a very snide and sardonic writer. He constantly interjects comments in parentheses (like some hack writer), and belittles almost everything and everyone he writes about. In some cases, like Morehouse's, it's deserved. In most, I see no reason at all for it. His disparagement of anything he has not seen work, or what trusted friends tell him will not work, is disheartening. Finally, he really seems to enjoy showing off his personal beliefs and vocabulary, in a manner that makes me really, really not like him. In short, this is okay, if only for the part about modern-day remote viewing. I'd flip through it a bit in the bookstore before buying it, though.
Rating:
Summary: An introduction for newbies
Review: Other readers are so busy trashing this book that they fail to see its merits: it's an ok book to introduce newcomers to a whole new area of possible intelligence. Obviously, the reader will take this with a grain of salt, and the author doesn't help his case by being so sarcastic and cutesy, but it's not that bad. A good editor would have thrown out 30 or 40 percent of the stuff and helped produced a tighter, more accurate and less pedantic and wiseass tome.
Rating:
Summary: Always Out on A Limb: Remote Viewing in Context
Review: There is a place for this book in the library of one interested in the paranormal, psychic intelligence, possible extra-terrestrial intelligence, and most significantly, remote viewing as it was called by the U.S. Military during the period it funded research in this area. Art Bell fans, take note. This is not a definitive piece. However, it contains well-documented events (e.g., acts of espionage based on Nostradamus by U.S. Intelligence during the Second World War). Madelbaum attempts to place Remote Viewing (final U.S. intelligence report appearing on the World Wide Web in 1998) in a context going back through the history of warfare. And today, a new generation is becoming familiar with the concept of PSYOPS or Psychological Operations, which has been a facet of the War on Global Terrorism and is not likely to vanish from the scene anytime soon. Some readers will recall Bill Murray's portrayal of Dr. Venkmann who used negative reinforcment (shock) to attempt to "train" fictitious experimental subjects to become more "psychic". In the mid-80s, I watched that film as my own work became perhaps one of the last officially (IRB) sanctioned "threat of negative reinforcement" experiments in the annals of experimental psychology.... I found the book interesting, with good references, not a bad read at all. No secrets of Freemasonry are revealed, nor are some of the "special tactics" of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Gestapo (Geheimstaatspolizei), Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, or the global terrorist movement. It is a book within a context, and "Remote Viewing" still has its fans. Even on the back cover (paperback version, 2000 imprimatur) is states..."With the flavor of fiction, yet with its foundation in fact, The Psychic Battlefield is the complete history of this use of man's extrasensory poweres in search of the information needed to win wars--hot and cold." Change "the complete" to "an historical exploration" and you've got it. You can get it cheap, and that's not bad either. The author is an attorney, "practicing psychic" (perhaps the two concepts create an oxymoron), and former intelligence officer. I think that provides ample context.
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of info, but significant drawbacks
Review: Wow -- it's impressive that Joseph McMoneagle gives this book 5 stars. Author Mandelbaum has done a lot of research, and presents use of the paranormal by the military in ages past well, with some good discussion of the ethics of using psi, the validity of psi and remote viewing, and some useful comments on how the implications of remote viewing affect our world view. But in my opinion the drawbacks of this book severely limit it.
For instance, Mandelbaum lists as "not fact" the story by David Morehouse that Morehouse's army helmet was hit by a machinegun round. Why is it not fact? Because one scientist says that head trauma can't awaken psychic experience. And because McMoneagle had a Near Death Experience (awakening McMoneagle's psychic ability), that means Morehouse couldn't have very separately suffered head trauma. Not only are there a number of people who report that head trauma awakened their psychic talent, but one could also find a number of scientists who would say McMoneagle's NDE couldn't have any relationship to psychic ability. Why the double standard? Does Mandelbaum really confuse McMoneagle's NDE (without head trauma) with Morehouse's head trauma (without NDE)? How illogical to claim that one man's NDE disproves another man's head injury! Morehouse was actually struck by a bullet; by including such pointless attacks, Mandelbaum makes us wonder what other stuff Mandelbaum made up.
Mandelbaum also criticizes Morehouse because Morehouse couldn't remote-view the location of a stolen manuscript. Yet McMoneagle, in McMoneagle's own book, says that "Remote viewing is _not_ good for locating [lost] things" (emphasis in original). There's little dispute McMoneagle is the best; yet Mandelbaum criticizes Morehouse for not doing something McMoneagle says can't be done.
Mandelbaum's chapter 24 contains repeated sophomoric insults to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. What does that have to do with the book topic? Where was the editor?
Some editing out of personal animosity and illogic, and the removal of cutesy and sophomoric comments, would greatly improve this book. For the person interested in remote viewing, I'd recommend, instead, Jim Schnabel's _Remote Viewers_ and Joseph McMoneagle's _Mind Trek_.
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