Started: 12/31/08
Finished: 1/3/08
Year: 2005
Pages: 298
Genre: Science/Afterlife
Grade: A
Reason for reading: library book
Blurb (from book jacket): "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 curiousity 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, an North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts, and the last surviving sample of 'ectoplasm' in a Cambridge University archive."
Opinion: A fascinating and scientific look at the afterlife. I've already recommended this book to others and will continue to do so. Mary Roach has a great sense of humor and it is incorporated throughout the book so one does not get "bored" with all of the scientific information. I really enjoyed this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment