All That Remains: A Life in Death

Product Information

This starts off with a very good intro introduction to death in general and forensic anthropology in particular. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller readers, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all. My favorite chapter was on Kosovo; elsewhere I found the mixture of science and memoir slightly off, and the voice never fully drew me in.

Her time there, as part of a team investigating war crimes, clearly had a significant effect on her as a person and that really comes across in the text. A bunch of notes on the author's personal life, private meetings with death, career and anthropology. Edward Snowden’s Permanent Record is good so far…and I really enjoyed Dalio’s Principles (I remember you didn’t so much! There's nothing wrong with this per ce, but it's a hundred pages in the front that's completely separated from what I thought I was getting - crime!But when it comes down to it the book is split into two parts - memoir and philosophy in the first 100 pages, and your standard forensic nonfiction in the rest. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Really enjoyed this one, lots of interesting information on forensic anthropology and also on the role they play in natural disasters and wars/civil unrest. In 38C heat, dressed in a white scene-of-crime suit, black rubber police wellies, a face mask and double latex gloves, she was standing at the door of an outhouse near a Kosovo village. The one that bothered me particularly is that she says that the surgeon Henry Gray, the author of Gray’s anatomy, was from Aberdeen. Black is a Forensic Anthropologist and a professor at Dundee University, and is obviously an expert in her work, and it is clear, that she holds a passion for what she does.One particular story about accidentally getting something in her mouth during an autopsy was enough to make me put the book down for a solid five minutes. Her no-nonsense practicality towards death and the human corpse gives the whole book a grounding that lifts it out of some kind of macabre show into a very necessary and frank discussion about what happens when we're dead, whether that be by fair or foul means. I found it to be a perfect blend of science and clinical explanations and personal, at times deeply moving, experiences with death and what happens after our passing. Honestly, my five stars are for a great book, but mostly they are for the woman she is and the service she so willingly provides. She begins the book with her medical training in university, what happens in a dissecting lab and how she felt standing before her first body.