Review: Spook by Mary Roach

This Book Is About

My Thoughts On This Book

Spook is a very witty scientific romp through present and past investigations and experiments into the nature of the human soul, reincarnation and life after death. This book is sort of like a research memoir for the writer, an open-minded modern cynic.

Mary Roach’s writing is entertaining, her research thorough and her subjects intriguing. Especially the section on psychical (real word, honest) research and hoaxes, the search for a biological origin of the soul, and Victorian efforts and devices for detecting, weighing, measuring and contacting souls.

Spook is a pretty quick read. I really enjoyed it.

Here’s the list of chapter titles:

1. You Again: A visit to the reincarnation man
2. The Little Man Inside the Sperm, or Possibly the Big Toe: Hunting the soul with microscopes and scalpels
3. How to Weigh a Soul: What happens when a man (or a mouse, or a leech) dies on a scale
4. The Vienna Sausage Affair: And other dubious highlights of the ongoing effort to see the soul.
5. Hard Swallow: The giddy, revolting heyday of ectoplasm
6. The large Claims of the Medium: Reaching out to the dead in a University of Arizona lab
7. Soul in a Dunce Cap: The author enrolls in medium school
8. Can You Hear Me Now?: Telecommunicating with the dead
9. Inside the Haunt Box: Can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate?
10. Listening to Casper: A psychoacoustics expert sets up camp in England’s haunted spots
11. Chaffin v. the Dead Guy in the Overcoat: In which the law finds for a ghost, and the author calls in an expert witness
12. Six Feet Over: A computer stands by an operating room ceiling, awaiting near-death experiences.

Spook is a New York Times Bestseller. Mary Roach’s articles have appeared in Salon, Wired, Outside, GQ, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine.

Rating & Levels For This Book

I Give This Book three Vikings out of five	Violence Level zero Burning Huts out of five	Romance Level zero Hearts out of five
# of actual vikings in book: 0 What do these levels mean? »	Humor Level zero Smiles out of five	Lust Level zero Kisses out of five

Author & Book Details

• Title: Spook
• Author(s): Mary Roach
• ISBN#: 0393329127
• Genre(s): Science
• Edition Reviewed: First edition trade paperback
• Illustrations: N/A
• Page Count: 295 (311 with Acknowledgments and Bibliography)
• Part of a Series: Sort of; her previous book was called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

Publishing & Copyright Details

• Publisher(s): W. W. Norton & Company
• Copyright: 2005, 2006
• In Print: Yes
• Original Language: English
• Published in Other Languages: No

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