Saturday, August 22, 2009

Sound Weird and Smart

Recommended reading for humans with a macabre bent. I just pulled these from my bookshelf, I am sure there are many more. Information to stop conversations at parties and scare away the person you've been hitting on at the bar.

Spook, by Mary Roach : Science tackles the afterlife

Stiff, also by Mary Roach : The curious lives of human cadavers

Stories in Stone, by Douglas Keister : A field guide to cemetery symbolism and iconography

Hidden Evidence, by David Owen : Forty true crimes and how forensic science helped solve them

Among The Cannibals, by Paul Raffaele : Adventures on the trail of man's darkest ritual

Ordeal by Hunger, by George Stewart : The story of the Donner Party

Death's Acre, by Dr. Bill Blass and Jon Jefferson : Inside the legendary forensic lab the Body Farm where the dead do tell tales

Postmortem-Establishing The Cause Of Death, by Dr. Steven A. Koehler and Dr. Cyril H. Wecht : self-explanatory title with lots of pictures

Corpse, by Jessica Snyder Sachs : Nature, forensics, and the struggle to pinpoint time of death. A very good book on forensic entomology

The Mummy Congress, by Heather Pringle : Science, obsession, and the everlasting dead

Dead Men Do Tell Tales, by William R. Maples, PH.D., and Michael Browning : The strange and fascinating cases of a forensic anthropologist

Old Souls, by Tom Shroder : Compelling evidence from children who remember past lives

The American Way of Death Revisited, by Jessica Mitford : A funny, cynical, sarcastic, and honest look at the history and current state of mere mortals vs. the funeral industry. An absolute favorite of mine, it has been re-read nearly to death

After The Funeral, by Edwin Murphy : The posthumous adventures of famous corpses

Written in Bones, by Paul Bahn : How human remains unlock the secrets of the dead

Why People believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer : I feel this book should be recommended reading in schools as well. It does debunk some ghost stories (and we don't want to believe false stories anyway, so no worries) but also goes after the group of people who do not believe the Holocaust happened, the harmful recovered memory moverment, and the modern witch crazes we have seen in our lifetimes. Another book I have read to death.

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