By Mary Roach
"Equal elements Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, either enlightening and entertaining."—Sunday Denver submit & Rocky Mountain News
The best-selling writer of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers now trains her substantial wit and interest at the human soul. What occurs after we die? Does the sunshine simply exit and that's that—the million-year nap? Or will a few a part of my character, my me-ness persist? what's going to that believe like? what's going to I do all day? Is there a spot to plug in my lap-top?" In an try to discover, Mary Roach brings her tireless interest to endure on an array of up to date and old soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all attempting to turn out (or disprove) that lifestyles is going on when we die. She starts the adventure in rural India with a reincarnation researcher and leads to a school of Virginia working room the place cardiologists have put in apparatus close to the ceiling to review out-of-body near-death reviews. alongside the best way, she enrolls in an English medium institution, will get electromagnetically haunted at a college in Ontario, and visits a Duke collage professor with a plan to weigh the awareness of a leech. Her ancient wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged via cadavers and calves' heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that validated felony priority for ghosts, and the final surviving pattern of "ectoplasm" in a Cambridge collage archive.
Read Online or Download Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife PDF
Similar death books
A Good Ending: A Compassionate Guide to Funerals, Pastoral Care, and Life Celebrations
Wow, that used to be a great funeral. reviews like this aren't an twist of fate, however the results of care and making plans, contends David Sparks in an excellent finishing. This sensible booklet offers recommendation and ideas for each step alongside the way in which, from aiding the demise individual, to making plans a funeral, existence party, or memorial, and to being with these left to mourn.
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Volume 2: Purgatorio (Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri)
The second one quantity of Oxford's new Divine Comedy provides the Italian textual content of the Purgatorio and, on dealing with pages, a brand new prose translation. carrying on with the tale of the poet's trip during the medieval different international below the assistance of the Roman poet Virgil, the Purgatorio culminates within the regaining of the backyard of Eden and the reunion there with the poet's long-lost love Beatrice.
Presents biographical and significant details at the poet Mark Strand, discussing a few of his hottest works, together with the tale of Our Lives, how it Is, Elegy for My Father, and darkish Harbor
- To Die Well: Your Right to Comfort, Calm, and Choice in the Last Days of Life
- The Role of Apoptosis in Development, Tissue Homeostasis and Malignancy: Death from inside out
- The Last Word: Women, Death, and Divination in Inner Mani
- A Better Place: Death and Burial in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
- Death: A Philosophical Inquiry
Extra info for Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Example text
She found it just after we moved 3,000 miles away from everything we knew, after she left my stepfather. It was the first beautiful thing she bought for our new home without the fear that it would be smashed to pieces. On rough nights, when she was down or lonely or frightened, she would light her lamp and sit for hours until she could sleep. Through the long, fearful nights at the height of a miserable divorce, she’d sit there until the sun came up, fear beating out her exhaustion. When she first found the two marble-sized lumps on her back, Mom found her comfort in the lights that danced untouchable behind glass, lights that would shine forever if she fed them.
My feet propped on a stool, I breathed in the crisp, clean air and savored the taste of home-squeezed lemonade. My eyes fixed on a cocoon attached to the bottom side of a green clematis leaf winding around the trellis. Silky threads quivered, split apart. Brilliant yellow and black wings emerged, and the butterfly wriggled its way out of its safe place. Defying predators and collectors with nets, it dared to soar through open fields and sip sweet nectar from nature’s bounty, spreading its majestic wings, golden pennants glistening in the sun.
We talked a little, but mostly I just held her hand. I knew that her philosophy embraced a broad understanding of energy, but I could tell how hard the process was. When she left, I was relieved as much as I grieved. She is still in my heart—and in my files. Our joint work, both published and unpublished, is a connection between our worlds. When I think of her, I am grateful for our years together. I never suspected when we met that our relationship would be so profound. But then, do we ever know where life takes us and who will share the journey?