Notes from the Edge Times

by Daniel Pinchbeck

In this unsparing tour of the perils and promises of the current era, visionary author Daniel Pinchbeck helps us understand that we don't need to wait for the dawning of the next age to radically change our perspectives.

In the years since his pioneering work 2012 , Daniel Pinchbeck has touched a legion of readers hungry for insight and guidance about new ways of living amid the crises of the current moment.

Notes from the Edge Times collects Pinchbeck's most penetrating recent columns, articles, and essays that amount to an extraordinary mosaic view of the hopes, nightmares, and signs of breakthrough that mark our present era. Pinchbeck examines the current economic collapse (an event he had foreseen by many months), radical political and ecological alternatives, the uses of psychedelics for spiritual insight, the revival of the sexual revolution, unexplained phenomena such as crop circles and the Norway spiral, the imminent (and often-misunderstood) question of 2012, and what it means to be an artist in a time of radical change.

Pinchbeck's virtuosity as a social critic, on full display in these pieces, is his ability to illuminate real and serious questions within unconventional topics that most literary intellects are unwilling to touch, from secret weapons systems to extrasensory abilities to the intelligence of plant life. In Notes from the Edge Times , Pinchbeck does more than critique present-day questions and conflicts; he provides fresh ideas for living more consciously now, and for constructing our own more enlightened futures, even as the world around us faces profound environmental, social, and spiritual challenges

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2010

About the author

Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author. His books include Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Notes from the Edge Times. He is a co-founder of the web magazine Reality Sandwich and of the website Evolver.net, and edited the North Atlantic Books publishing imprint Evolver Editions. He was featured in the 2010 documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and produced by Mangusta Films. He is the founder of the think tank Center for Planetary Culture, which produced the Regenerative Society Wiki.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to read this after I starting Breaking Open the Head, then I ended up finishing this before the other, because Breaking had so much more to process. Notes from the Edge Times brings up some interesting ideas, and then drops them within a couple pages. The chapters are really more like musings, starting off points for better, more in-depth discussions. I was writing down a bunch of quotes from the first couple chapters and then stopped as the later chapters seemed to end just as I was warming up to them. The exception is a long chapter at the end about his father, which is touching, but was too "grounding" for me, as I wanted to "fly away" with his zanier earlier entries.

[Noah Skocilich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays that once again makes it clear what a clear and gifted communicator Daniel Pinchbeck is and what a gift it is the way he articulates a landscape of reality that takes into account knowledge of the occult and so forth together with savvy about more mundane things like global warming and neoliberalism.

For me, writers like Daniel Pinchbeck go a long way toward making the world more ‘knowable’, or, to have a frame in which thinking about it even makes sense.

[Matthew Monk · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one of the pioneers in bringing so-called "fringe academics" to the mainstream, Notes from the Edge Times, is a collection of Pinchbeck's published essays from the last four years. While, each essay is not a detailed academic treatise on any chosen subject, the usefulness of this collection is in the breadth of the range of topics included, and the Bibliography/reading list Pinchbeck provides for readers interested in more intense and detailed study of such subjects. While not claiming to be an expert on any one subject, what Pinchbeck gives demonstrates his ability to be a very astute reader among many subjects that are unknown or kept under the radar of mainstream academia and literary thought. Pinchbeck's "participatory journalism" as it could be called, focuses on the transformation of human consciousness with an interest in shamanism, ethnobotany, psychedelics, weapons systems, crop circles, UFO sightings, genetics and many incidents of existential weirdness. While his earlier books "Breaking Open the Head: A Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism" and "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" are more detailed and thoroughly researched, "Notes from the Edge Times" is worth a read, and very palatable to the layman who is just becoming interested in alternative academic subjects.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

i love daniel's writings and all the work he has done to spread his message about an imminent shift in consciousness. his analysis of the current socio-economic state of the world is on point. It can be refreshing to here some of the viable alternatives he offers to our debt based market hungry global economy.
i was however a bit disappointed with this one as i found many of the essays to be repetitive without really expanding upon his earlier opinions.

[Cbphoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books you can possibly read in 2010. Pinchbeck ROCKS

[Reiden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the content of the short pieces in this book, especially the interesting insights into today's economy and the great references to other relevant authors of this time.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pinchbeck is urging and inspiring our visionary ideals to practical action