Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach, Paperback, 9780393329124 | Buy online at The Nile
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Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Science Tackles the Afterlife

Author: Mary Roach  

The best-selling author of Stiff  and Bonk trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul.

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Summary

The best-selling author of Stiff  and Bonk trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul.

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Description

"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 historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.

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Awards

Commended for New York Times Notable Selection 2005

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Critic Reviews

“"The general reader's ideal emissary to the arcana of serious science. . . . Roach's writing has what science has so far failed to find: a divine spark."”

"The general reader's ideal emissary to the arcana of serious science... Roach's writing has what science has so far failed to find: a divine spark." -- Malcolm Jones - Newsweek "Dependably witty, especially when it ventures far into the ether... [Roach] makes a clever investigator and a thoroughly entertaining, if skeptical, tour guide." -- Janet Maslin - New York Times "Investigative reporting has no lighter, more irreverent spirit than Mary Roach... Spook is enormous fun." -- David A Walton - Pittsburgh Union-Tribune "Surreal, fascinating, at times absurd and always hilarious, Mary Roach may not reveal the street address of our final destination, but in Spook she makes it sound less like a morgue and more like a comedy club." -- Vince Darcangelo - Boulder Weekly "Funny and smart... since she's a scientist at heart, she also lasers through the smoke and mirrors." -- People "Reading Spook is like attending a lecture by a professor who is equal parts Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening and entertaining." -- Dorman T. Schindler - Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News

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About the Author

Mary Roach is the author of five best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Oakland, California.

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More on this Book

"Equal parts Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening and entertaining."--"Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News" The best-selling author 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 historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She begins 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 plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves' heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts, and the last surviving sample of "ectoplasm" in a Cambridge University archive. 10 illustrations.

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Product Details

Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company | WW Norton & Co
Published
31st October 2006
Pages
311
ISBN
9780393329124

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