I chose to read this book because John Burke in his book Imagine Heaven often quoted Dr. Long's research. The book bogs down in the beginning a bit with details about how Dr. Long created his NDE website, the questions he poses and why, and statistical analyses of the responses. What I enjoyed more was reading the NDE accounts themselves as I find them very inspiring or otherwise instructive.

Dr. Long's main omission is in not pursuing in more detail some of the negative responses, such as from people who didn't encounter God or a God-like being. He rarely mentions Jesus, whereas MOST of the NDE accounts I have read to-date (even from non-Christians) mention encountering a being they KNOW to be Jesus. He says he isn't cherry-picking through the accounts people post, but I find it hard to believe that so many refer to a "being of light" without naming who they believe it to be. So who is presenting biased accounts? John Burke? or Dr. Long? Randy Kay and Shaun Tabatt present numerous NDEs in which the person encounters Jesus (whether raised to believe in Him or not), yet Dr. Long's book is lacking any similar pattern - I just expected more of the accounts to mention Jesus. It just leaves me questioning who is biased or not. As I am a "believer", I am seeking books that might convince my highly skeptical atheistic friends or family members, but I need to find data I can trust.

I like Dr. Long's book because it attempts applying scientific principles, but it will still come across as biased and lacking sufficient rigor to my skeptical atheistic friends and family members. It's good, but it would have been good for Dr. Long to have some die-hard skeptics give him feedback on the book to help him identify places where his important analyses could have shed more convincing light upon the matter. It is still an enjoyable read (and you can skip over the statistics parts and just stick to the stories!).