Spook : science tackles the afterlife

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Title:

Spook : science tackles the afterlife

Author:

Roach, Mary, author.

Edition:

1st ed.

Contents:

You again : a visit to the reincarnation nation -- The little man inside the sperm, or possibly the big toe : hunting the soul with microscopes and scalpels -- How to weigh a soul : what happens when a man (or a mouse, or a leech) dies on a scale -- The Vienna sausage affair : and other dubious highlights of the ongoing effort to see the soul -- Hard to swallow : the giddy, revolting heyday of ectoplasm -- The large claims of the medium : reaching out to the dead in a University of Arizona lab -- Soul in a dunce cap : the author enrolls in medium school -- Can you hear me now? : telecommunicating with the dead -- Inside the haunt box : can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate? -- Listening to Casper : a psychoacoustics expert sets up camp in England's haunted spots -- Chaffin v. the dead guy in the overcoat : in which the law finds for a ghost, and the author calls in an expert witness -- Six feet over : a computer stands by on an operating room ceiling, awaiting near-death experiencers.

Physical Description:

311 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Subject Term:

Future life.

Religion and science.

Publisher:

W.W. Norton,

Electronic Access:

Table of contents

Publication Date:

2005

ISBN:

9780393059625

Publication Information:

New York : W.W. Norton, 2005.

Call Number:

129 ROACH

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607002774407	Adult Nonfiction	129 ROACH	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's thatthe 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.

Author Notes

Mary Roach was born and raised in Etna, New Hampshire. She has a BA degree in psychology from Wesleyan University. She spent a few years as a free-lance copy editor before she landed a job at the San Francisco Zoological Society turning out press releases. She then moved on to write humor pieces for such periodicals as The New York Times Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle and Sports Illustrated. Her article "How to Win at Germ Warfare" was a National Magazine Award Finalist, in 1995. In 1996, her article on earthquake-proof bamboo houses took the Engineering Journalism Award. She published several books such as Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003) and Packing for Mars (2010).

Mary's title Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2016.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The deadpan humor and subtle wit that journalist Roach (Stiff) is known for is overshadowed by Quigley's exaggerated delivery in this disappointing audio adaptation. Like Roach's previous book, this exploration of the afterlife is loaded with unusual historical facts, oddball encounters and humorous observations. Unfortunately, Quigley performs rather than reads the material, and her snarky, knowing tone is as out of sync with Roach's earnest investigation as are her atrocious character voices. For reincarnation researcher Dr. Rawat, she adopts a heavily accented voice as subtle as The Simpsons' Hindu grocer, Apu. Professor Gerry Naham is lent a nasally, squeaky voice, apparently to convey his nerdiness (he aims to build a system that can detect the departure of a dying person's soul using electromagnetic energy). Then there's sheep rancher Lewis Hollander, whom Quigley gives the mellow voice of a stoned hippie despite Roach's description of him as "a kindly, soft-spoken guy"; one almost expects Hollander to preface his description of his homegrown soul-weighing experiment with "dude." Quigley transforms these intriguing, eccentric people into caricatures and makes this a grating listen. Simultaneous release with the Norton hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 22). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

In Stiff, Roach investigated what happened to the body after death. Now she's going for what happens to the soul, talking to mediums, reincarnation researchers, and cardiologists who install equipment intended to record the near-death experience. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.