|
Product Description
A serious and seriously entertaining exploration of the dark and varied obsessions that the “civilized West” has had with decapitated heads and skulls.
The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain, and boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most distinctive attribute and connects our inner selves to the outer world. Yet there is a dark side to the head’s preeminence, one that has, in the course of human history, manifested itself in everything from decapitation to headhunting. So explains anthropologist Frances Larson in this fascinating history of decapitated human heads. From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, Larson explores our macabre fixation with severed heads. 25 illustrationsCustomers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses
- The Body: A Guide for Occupants
- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death
- From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
- The Victorian Book of the Dead
- Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
- From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
- Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
- Death: A Graveside Companion
*If this is not the "Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 15, 2024 04:08 +08.