Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife | 
| Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 14427
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0393329127
Dewey Decimal Number: 129
EAN: 9780393329124
ASIN: 0393329127
Publication Date: October 2, 2006
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
If author Mary Roach was a college professor, she'd have a zero drop-out rate. That's because when Roach tackles a subject--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 forth with such zeal, humor, and ingenuity that her students (er, readers) feel like they're witnessing the most interesting thing on Earth. 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 believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith. It's a giggly, random, utterly earthbound assault on our most ponderous unanswered question." Talk about truth in advertising. 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 myriad 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 artfully 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-infomercial-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 thoroughly fun. --Kim Hughes
Product Description
"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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| Customer Reviews: Read 93 more reviews...
 A truly unfortunate follow-up to Stiff July 10, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I loved Mary Roach's first book, Stiff, about what becomes of our bodies after we die. It was so fresh. It tackled a novel, but sensitive topic in a way that was very funny, but wasn't offensive. On top of that, I learned something. It was sophisticated irreverence.
I just learned that Mary has since written two more books and I was very excited to read them. Spook, about science tackling the question of the afterlife and the whether humans truly have an immortal soul seemed like it might be another fresh take on a dicey subject.
It wasn't.
All of the components that made Roach's sophomoric humor so successful in Stiff are missing in Spook. That form of humor works when you simultaneously demonstrate that you are capable of deeper thinking, analysis and understanding. In that case, it shows that you can work and play on many levels. When you just bring the juvenile humor, you just look juvenile. It's not a good look.
Feel free to skip this one, even if you loved Stiff. On the other hand, if you haven't read Stiff, you should, even if you read this book and hated it.
 Entertaining but not very thorough. May 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was entertained by this book at first because her research covered many areas I was unfamiliar with. I enjoyed that part however I felt like there was much missing. The Author carefully picked the items that already fit into her previous belief system and then rejected everything else. I am glad I read it because I can learn something new from everything...
This is overall a very incomplete study of the afterlife.........
Juvenile May 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was expecting more. given her access tos a diverse group of fascinating but unconventional people, Spook rarely rises above pointing and giggling.
Given the skewering Roach gives to her unwitting collaboraters, I wonder how many more books she can write before all doors are slammed in her face.
Grow up, Mary April 22, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Let me begin by saying that Mary Roach is an excellent researcher and a deft writer. That's the good news. The bad news is that she is immature and there is way too much Mary in this book. Reading this book is like spending an afternoon with a precocious 12 year old boy. At first she is somewhat amusing, but quickly becomes ill-mannered, whiny, and rude. By the end of the afternoon, you are quite eager to return the boorish, annoying little brat to her parents. She has a mean streak, and when I say mean I'm talking Ann Coulter-mean. She makes fun of people's names, looks, dress, and how they talk. (As a researcher, this shows terribly bad form--you do not insult those who have been kind enough to help you write the book). She also an unsettling and frequent habit of including something gross every chance she gets. I lost count of the number of times she digressed into some tangent involving bodily functions. Then she has the nerve to write something like, "It's always underpants with these guys." No, Mary, it's always underpants with YOU. The title of the book is meant to mislead, by the way (I'm sure Mary snickered when the publisher informed her about the chosen subtitle as she knew it would pull in the "suckers.") The title should actually be "A Skeptic's Cynical Guide to Wackos who Believe in the Afterlife." Mary should not be allowed out of her room until she becomes a grown-up.
 A trifling but very (and sometimes VERY) funny book April 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you want to learn anything about pretty much anything, Spook is not the book for you. Whereas Roach's earlier effort (Stiff) was at once quite funny and packed with interesting details, Spook, though also quite funny, is pretty much totally lacking in the substance area. Why 5 stars then? Because it's a no-brainer to this reader, at least, that MR's principal purpose in writing is to entertain, and only a distant secondarily to inform or instruct. In short, I did not expect to learn much about science, the afterlife, or about approaches to the study of the latter by the former when I picked up a copy of Spook. What I did expect was to be amused, greatly greatly amused. Reading page after page of MR's wry observations and hilarious turns of phrase, I certainly was. Spook is a very fun read.
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