Spook, Mary Roach
Spook, Mary Roach
3 Rating(s)
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
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Spook
Science Tackles the Afterlife

Author: Mary Roach

Narrator: Bernadette Quigley

Unabridged: 8 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 10/10/2005

Synopsis

“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 laptop?”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.

About Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the bestselling author celebrated for transforming the strangest corners of science into irresistible reading adventures. With a mix of fearless curiosity and laugh-out-loud humor, she takes readers behind the scenes of subjects most of us wouldn't dare to ask about-from the fate of cadavers in Stiff to the science of sex in Bonk, the logistics of space travel in Packing for Mars, and the eccentricities of the human body in Gulp.

A master at turning rigorous research into page-turning stories, Roach has built a devoted following by making science both accessible and delightfully weird. Her books, which include multiple New York Times bestsellers, combine meticulous reporting with her trademark wit, proving that no topic is too taboo or too obscure to explore.

Whether she's investigating the digestive tract, military field research, or the quirks of life beyond Earth, Mary Roach entertains as much as she informs-reminding us that science is not only fascinating but also endlessly fun.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

Roach is the author of Stiff, a raucous romp through the wonderful land of death. It is only natural that she might continue that escapade with a look past the curtain. Are there ghosts? Is there life after death? She examines a host of topics under her conceptual umbrella, looking at reincarnation,......more

Goodreads review by Lena

I learned a number of interesting things reading Mary Roach's survey of the historical and scientific efforts to prove the existence of a soul. Her discussion of the scientific inquiries into stories of reincarnated children provides an excellent example of the difficulties of trying to objectively......more

Goodreads review by Simeon

Not bad, but Roach reveals her limitations in this book; namely, she writes mostly to entertain. She spends most of her time making fun of mediums from the spiritualism craze in the 20's (which, let's face it, is like shooting fish in a barrel). But you can also sense the places where her unspoken th......more

Goodreads review by Francisca

All of Mary Roach's book have a few things in common: (1) They are brilliantly and exhaustively researched. (2) They are incredibly engaging. (3) They are hilarious without ever being silly. Spook is not the exception. Roach take on the afterlife is a fresh one, aimed at explaining the many similar phen......more

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