Items related to Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.
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About the Author:
DR FRANCES LARSON is an honorary research fellow at the University of Oxford and the author of a biography of Henry Wellcome, An Infinity of Things, which was a Sunday Times Book of The Year and a New Scientist Best Book of 2009. She is also the co-author of Knowing Things (OUP, 2007), a book on the history of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, where she worked as a researcher after receiving her D.Phil.
Review:
“Larson delves into the grotesque yet wildly fascinating topic of decapitation... [Her] lively, conversational tone turns these morbid objects into something more meaningful than a mere expression of the macabre.”
- Publishers Weekly
“[W]ide-ranging and thoughtful... In an age where so many taboos are fading, the severed head retains its dreadful and sacred power.”
- Mike Jay, Wall Street Journal
“No need to explain why this nonfiction book made the top of my list... Despite the ghoulish subject, this is a closely researched, indeed, scholarly study of the bizarre customs of hunting, collecting, trading, displaying and otherwise bonding with other people’s heads.”
- Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“This idiosyncratic history of decapitation... jumps between historical and recent examples, from the invention of the guillotine in the French Revolution to Damien Hirst’s self-portrait in a morgue... This morbid obsession, [Larson] argues, is common to all cultures―a realization that dawned on her when she worked at a museum that exhibited shrunken heads. Her book shares in this fascination―‘dangerous but irresistible’―and makes some distinctions between the forms it takes.”
- New Yorker
- Publishers Weekly
“[W]ide-ranging and thoughtful... In an age where so many taboos are fading, the severed head retains its dreadful and sacred power.”
- Mike Jay, Wall Street Journal
“No need to explain why this nonfiction book made the top of my list... Despite the ghoulish subject, this is a closely researched, indeed, scholarly study of the bizarre customs of hunting, collecting, trading, displaying and otherwise bonding with other people’s heads.”
- Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“This idiosyncratic history of decapitation... jumps between historical and recent examples, from the invention of the guillotine in the French Revolution to Damien Hirst’s self-portrait in a morgue... This morbid obsession, [Larson] argues, is common to all cultures―a realization that dawned on her when she worked at a museum that exhibited shrunken heads. Her book shares in this fascination―‘dangerous but irresistible’―and makes some distinctions between the forms it takes.”
- New Yorker
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- PublisherGranta Books
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 1783780568
- ISBN 13 9781783780563
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages317
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story. A serious and seriously entertaining exploration of the dark and varied obsessions that the 'civilized West' has had with decapitated heads and skulls. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781783780563
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