The seminal biography of the twentieth century's premier chronicler of the paranormal, Charles Fort-a man whose very name gave rise to an adjective, fortean, to describe the unexplained. By the early 1920s, Americans were discovering that the world was a strange place. Charles Fort could demonstrate that it was even stranger than anyone suspected. Frogs fell from the sky. Blood rained from the heavens. Mysterious airships visited the Earth. Dogs talked. People disappeared. Fort asked why, but, even more vexing, he also asked why we weren't paying attention. Here is the first fully rendered literary biography of the man who, more than any other figure, would define our idea of the anomalous and paranormal. In Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, the acclaimed historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer goes deeply into the life of Charles Fort as he saw himself: first and foremost, a writer. "If the current slide toward a recession makes only one affordable, however, go for Steinmeyer’s bio. It gives you a good-sized taste of Fort’s works with the added benefit of how those works came to be. And as strange as Fort’s stories were, the story of Fort himself is, I’d argue, even stranger, making Steinmeyer’s book the most engaging biography of 2008 thus far." –Rod Lott.