Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
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- ISBN13: 9780393329124
- Condition: New
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Product Description
“Equal parts Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening and entertaining.”—Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News The best-selling leader of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers now trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul. What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?” In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and past soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She starts the journey in rural India with a reincarnation researcher and ends up in a University of Virginia operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences. Along the way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario, and visits a Duke University professor with a plot to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her past wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves’ heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that customary officially authorized precedence for ghosts, and the last extant sample of “ectoplasm” in a Cambridge University archive.Amazon.com Review
If leader Mary Roach was a college professor, she’d have a zero drop-out rate. That’s because when Roach tackles a theme–like the posthumous human body in her previous bestseller, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, or the soul in the winning Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife–she charges into the world with such zeal, humor, and ingenuity that her students (er, readers) feel like they’re witnessing the most appealing thing on Planet. Who the heck would skip that? As Roach informs us in her introduction, “This is a book for people who would like very much to judge in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have distress long-suffering these things on faith. It’s a giggly, random, utterly earthbound assault on our most ponderous unanswered question.” Talk about truth in publicity. With that, Roach grabs us by the wrist and hauls butt to India, England, and various points in between in search of human spiritual ephemera, consulting an earnest bunch of scientists, mystics, psychics, and kooks along the way. It’s a heck of a journey and Roach, with one eyebrow mischievously cocked, is a fantastically entertaining tour guide, at once respectful and hilarious, dubious yet probing. And brother, does she bring the facts. Indeed, Spook’s heap footnotes are nearly as riveting as the principal text. To wit: “In reality, an X-ray of the head could not show the brain, because the skull blocks the rays. What appeared to be an X-ray of the folds and convolutions of a human brain inside a skull–an image circulated widely in 1896–was in fact an X-ray of cunningly arranged cat intestines.” Or this: “Medical treatises were eminently more readable in Sanctorius’s day. Medicina statica delved fearlessly into subjects of unprecedented medical eccentricity: ‘Cucumbers, how prejudicial,’ and the tantalizing ‘Leaping, its consequences.’ There’s even a full-page, near-ad-quality plug for something called the Flesh-Brush.” While rigid students of theology might take exception to Roach’s conclusions (namely, we’re just a bag of bones killing time before donning a soil blanket) it’s hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this impressively researched and immensely readable book. And since, as Roach suggests, each of us has only one go-round, we might as well waste downtime with something painstakingly fun. –Kim Hughes
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What a waste of paper. I was in the airport and selected up this book. Bring shame on on you Ms. Roach. This is a poorly written, unintelligent work. Please, next time use what is in between your ears to research and craft what you are trying to convey. What I got as a replacement for was a barfbag of poorly written ghost tales that went nowhere. No developed thesis to be establish. Nothing I couldn’t have gleaned from a chat with a half drunk barfly.
Recast this book Ms. Roach.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE WORST BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ…. NOT ONLY DID IT NOT DEAL WITH ANY SIENTIFIC REASEARCH, IT WAS TOTALY OF THE MARK SPIRITUALY. HER SATIRE, ALSO STINKS, SHOULD AVE THROWN $20.00 DOWN THE TOILET…..
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I was very, very, disapointed with this book.I establish it to be no more than a sarcastic slam at belief in God. I wasn’t even impressed with Roach’s “scientific research.” Nothing more than a diatribe against religion.Roach seems to miss the fact that belief in God and the afterlife are matters of faith. If it is scientifically” proven, then you do not have faith. This is not worth your time or money, whether you are a “believer” or not.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
On a surface read of some sections alone, I noticed inaccuracies and sweeping statements that are not backed-up by facts, additional than the leader’s bias, about some of the people mentioned. I know, for instance, the medium Glyn Edwards extremely well and that he does ‘not’ wear a medalion on a ribbon, as negatively described in the book. This is something Ministers of the SNU sometimes wear and demonstrates how the leader has got him mixed up with a name else. It may seem like a minor point, but leads me to question just how much else is inaccurate.
The writing, in the places that I bothered to read, seems to be more about the leader’s own rubbish and paints her as a name who is more concerned about appearances and with a dislike for anyone with any physical weaknesses or impediments. Most people would consider a name, such as Glyn, who has the courage to continue effective publically after a serious illness, which left him slightly disfigured, as admirable.
The leader is hardly writing objectively. She suggests that Glyn would cut-up doubters to pieces, yet doesn’t find out if he really does. Glyn, in fact, is open minded, has in-depth knowledge of many traditions and has never said that he has all the answers. This style of research and writing wouldn’t be accacetable in the first year of a Religious Studies degree course. I’d be suprised to know if there is anyone in the world that could possibly live up to the leader’s cynical judgments.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I like ghost tales and tales of the ‘beyond’ and all that persons categories entail. That said, I despise this book. Mary Roach has the authorial voice of a 12 year ancient. I read the first chapter thinking, ‘wow, this book might as well have been edited by a middle school yearbook writer.’ There are a plethora of books on the market dealing with this theme matter. Pick any of them. Place Mary Roach on the bookshelf.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5