Although over a century has passed since its original publica-tion, The Book on Mediums remains the most comprehensive and basic text on spiritism, revealing the fundamental principles of communication with the spirit world. The author covers in detail: • the manifestations in which spirits can appear • how spirits communicate • the different types of mediums who receive spirit communication • how to invoke the spirit, affirm its identity, and reinforce its moral purpose • how to avoid possession by inferior spirits The author also explores the phenomena of table-rapping, levi-tation, typtology, pneumatology, and psychography, and discusses mediumship in animals. Caution is advised because spirits, like humans, exist at different levels of evolution-they can be superior or inferior and their message gross, frivolous, serious or instructive. Throughout the text, the reader will find direct quotations from the spirits themselves. Allan Kardec was born in 1804 in Lyons, France. It was not until he was in his early fifties that he turned his attention to the fashionable spiritist phenomena that was putting all of Europe under a spell. Kardec was a scholar and a scientist, and painstakingly collected the details of spiritist phenomena. By rationally and methodically imposing order on them, he synthesized a distillate of their teachings and thus created the foundation of spiritism.