Australian Journal of Parapsychology 219 Companion to the Project Alpha Papers. By Peter R. Phillips (2016). Pari, Italy: Pari Publishing. 50 pages. ISBN: 978-88- 95604-29-9 (Kindle). AUD $7.15 (EUR$4.99; USD$5.50). Project Alpha was a hoax orchestrated, in 1979, by the magician James Randi, who rose to fame in the 1970s when the psychic Uri Geller’s performances attracted much interest and controversy. The idea of the project was basically to see if two young magicians could fool parapsychologists into believing that they were psychics. The magicians were Michael Edwards and Steven Shaw, the latter is now better known professionally as Banachek. The main targets were the researchers at the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research (the MacLab) at Washington University. The research there was directed by Peter Phillips, Professor of Physics. Michael Thalbourne joined the MacLab researchers toward the end of 1981. Phillips (2010), in his obituary to Thalbourne, wrote: “At the end of his life, he was planning on publishing a collection of articles about Project Alpha, giving both sides . . . ” (p. 384). Eighteen articles and some letters concerning Project Alpha have now been made freely available on the website of the Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research. Phillips has provided comments on several of them. In addition, Phillips with the help of his recollections, old correspondence, and the material that Thalbourne had gathered wrote a brief monograph, Companion to the Project Alpha Papers, which has now been published. Companion to the Project Alpha Papers In the monograph Phillips relates how his interest was triggered when he read an article by Helmut Schmidt (1969), who described his initial micro-PK research involving random number generators whose output appeared to deviate from randomness during his studies. Phillips knew nothing about parapsychology, but nevertheless thought that an attempt “. . . to replicate at least the electronic parts of Schmidt’s experiment looked like an ideal project . . .” (p. 15) for one of his students. Phillips called Schmidt and asked for information. He also began to read the literature and became acquainted with parapsychologists. At some point Phillips observed macro-PK and recalls: “The most memorable of these events took place spontaneously, in conditions of high emotion” (p. 16). He provides no details but mentions that the students he thought were responsible for the phenomena “. . . had a history of such occurrences, but never claimed to be able to produce them on demand” (p. 16). He spoke with J. B. Rhine in 1972 and recalls that Rhine said: “You