THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach (Norton, 288 pp., $24.95). At a recent reading of her new book, Mary Roach entertained her audience by...
...Cashill is especially tough on Cosell and his colleagues in the media, whom he holds just as responsible as Ali for driving whites and blacks apart in the 1960s...
...Despite these interesting diversions (and footnotes full of the exuberant, yet unrelated excesses of her research— including tidbits on horned men and leprechauns), Roach does offer some insights into the psychology of our interest in the afterlife, and how we have physically investigated such an ethereal subject...
...If you're interested in the beatification process for a false saint of the left, however, you've come to the right place...
...Her keen appreciation for the bizarre also serves her well in Spook, which she describes as "not a story about spirits, but of the human spirit...
...Perhaps the reader, in her zealous pursuit of the higher truths, skipped the introduction to the book, in which Roach explains her approach to spiritual matters in this work...
...To many on the left, however, he has become much more than a simple boxer...
...while he admits the boxer was great, he points out that the man was flawed, perhaps unforgivably so...
...The reader, obviously hoping for some serious answers regarding the mysteries of the hereafter, complained that after finishing the book she did not know one bit more about the afterlife...
...Roach investigates scientific research into the afterlife not to provide answers to any age-old questions...
...I, like the Elle reader, know little more about the afterlife now...
...Her last book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, delved gleefully into the strange world of cadavers used as crash-test dummies, subjects in ballistic testing, and myriad other unexpected functions...
...Although Ali comes off terribly (especially in his race-baiting and public humiliation of Joe Frazier, and the treatment of his wives), his handlers and sympathizers come off as pure evil...
...It is in our human nature to seek knowledge about our world and, when forced to confront it, the world beyond...
...Roach is not one to shy away from a difficult topic...
...Instead, she revels in the fact that "the more you expose the intricacies and realities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become...
...Roach approaches the spiritual realm with an admittedly skeptical tone, but one that is tempered by an enthusiasm towards her subject and a genuine interest in those (often peculiar) people who study it...
...She notes that it is "the requisite untimely loss of a loved one, which so often sparks an interest in the hereafter among otherwise orthodox scientists...
...This curiosity takes her to the far corners of the earth—from India, to England, to North Carolina...
...In his prime, Muhammad Ali was, without a doubt, one of the greatest fighters of all time...
...Sonny Bunch...
...But I can admit to an increased sense of wonder at the human spirit and the drive to understand a little more about those things that remain so elusively beyond our comprehension...
...Bridget Harrington Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook that Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream by Jack Cashill (Nelson Current, 304 pp., $24.99...
...Cashill's new book is an attempt to debunk the myth that the New Left created about Ali in his time...
...From Elijah Muhammad to Don King to Howard Cosell, those responsible for crafting the Ali legend are torn down and described, respectively, as a murderer, a crook, and an opportunistic coward...
...At a recent reading of her new book, Mary Roach entertained her audience by relating a criticism leveled at it in an Elle magazine reader review...
...Those interested in reading about Ali's exploits in the ring will be disappointed by Sucker Punch...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 20
