2014: Book #1 - Proof of Heaven

I've gotten a good start on my 2014 books.  In fact I'm almost done with the second, so I need to catch up and report on the first.  It seems like each year I read a book that has something to do with the afterlife.  One year it was about dogs and heaven, last year I read about a young boy who had a near death experience and this year I read about a neurosurgeon who experienced heaven during a serious illness.  Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander MD adds a very interesting view to previous near death stories.  He is a practicing neurosurgeon, so his depth of knowledge about such things as thoughts, dreams, knowledge and memory is vast.  Prior to his own experience he rationalized stories about near death as occurring in various parts of the brain and didn't believe that the person actually had an encounter with anything divine.

But, the particular type of illness Dr. Alexander suffered rendered the parts of his brain that he previously believed created these near death experiences in others, useless.  So in addition to personally having such an experience he couldn't explain it away. 

The book is a bit medical at times - a characteristic that appealed to me, but could be a negative if medical information isn't something you want to read about.  The medical parts are not the yucky type details, just more the technical side of the workings of our brains.  The story is definitely thought provoking.  This is perhaps the most convincing book about an afterlife experience that I've read.  And, one of the very, very few books that I would give a second read.