Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Written by Mary Roach
Narrated by Bernadette Quigley
3/5
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About this audiobook
"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.
Editor's Note
A journey to the afterlife…
With a fair balance of a scientist’s skepticism and curiosity, Roach seeks answers to questions about the afterlife from a variety of respected and quirky sources. The answers may be no more concrete than ghosts, but they’re just as thought-provoking and fun.
Reviews for Spook
1,129 ratings104 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amusing and inciteful. The author tackles reincarnation, spirit mediums, out-of-body experiences and the like. Very interesting reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I still can't get over the quality of Roach's writing. She takes her subject very seriously without removing the humor and mystery. If she wrote high school science textbooks, I might now understand biology, chemistry, and physics.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to. I decided to read it because it seemed like a natural sequel to the excellent "Stiff." I feared that since the most likely results of the research in the book would be entirely negative or at best offering some narrow wiggle-room for their most optimistic interpretors. Which is exactly what the experiments produced. But Mary Roach knows how to keep her writing interesting and moving at an energetic pace despite the mundane results produced by those searching for proof that people outlast their corporal bodies. Highlights include a trip to meet a North Carolina family whose great-grandfather returned from the grave to make changes to his will, descriptions of the various contraptions invented to weigh the human (or animal) soul, scientists investigating the possibility that electro-magnetic fields and infrasound might cause feelings of being haunted, and descriptions of mediums from the spiritualism movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries with their methods of producing "ectoplasm" from a variety of bodily orifices. I would definitely read more of her books.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mary Roach reports on the state of research into the afterlife. Covers everything from the evidence for reincarnation to infrasound-produced hallucinations.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This is the third of Mary Roach's scientific exploratory books I've read and feels the weakest so far. In this book Mary tackles the idea of after-life but from a scientific angle. For me one of the issues I have with this book, and it shows in her other books, is she never really engages the people she's talking to. Sure there will be quotes and little anecdotes but never any real discussion. It always leaves me wanting to know more but then she moves on to the next subject.
The part of the book I found most interesting wasn't even about the after-life, instead it was about a handwriting analyst comparing old wills. Yeah it wasn't the most exciting of books. I was happy to see the end of it. I do have her latest book which I've heard is much better but don't expect me to pick it up in any hurry. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Considering the subject matter, I wasn't expecting a definitive answer to the question of life after death, but highly anticipated another side splitting, wild ride with Ms. Roach, and was not disappointed :-) The best, and most telling, parts of this book were her insights into the researchers she researched and worked with. Her exploits in India had me hoping that chapter would never end. I was crying from laughter when I got to the part about her borrowing proper clothing from the doctor's wife. She hits all of the high points and many of the lows in her research of early spiritualism and the fascinating characters she digs up. A tiny bit slow compared to Packing for Mars and Stiff, but still a worthy read.