"Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife" By Mary Roach

Title: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Author: Mary Roach
Published Year: 2005
Pages: 311
Description:

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

 

My Take:

 

"Spook" is my second Mary Roach book that I have read, and I have already started a third of hers I love her works so much.  She brings whit to science aspects that are normally not so funny and enjoyable. Roach increases my want to learn more about the subjects she writes about. In "Spook" she researches the aspects of what happens after we die, from such subjects of reincarnation, mediums, and whether or not a soul could be weighed or seen, and also near-death experiences. Some of the research is done the traditional way of pouring through historical texts, magazines and papers, but also by trying hands on and actually speaking to people in the fields that interest her. My favorite part of her books is that at the end of each, she states how she feels about the subjects that she has presented. In the case of "Spook" she relates to whether or not she is a believer. For anyone that is curious about investigating the afterlife in a fun manor without too much seriousness, this book is for you. There are some skeptic points, but many people are skeptic about some of these aspects.