In the foreword, Roach takes great care to mention her attempts to research and write this book without bias; she does a reasonable, if imperfect job at that. Honestly, when speaking of the nature of reincarnation, ensoulment, ghosts and various other things of that nature, I believe it to be impossible to be entirely objective. Personally, I've read enough self-insert fanfiction to hope for a screwy amalgamation of reincarnation and infinite universes.

Not a single boring chapter, though my favorite is definitely the discussion of ectoplasm and the many possibilities of where it could be hidden in and/or on the medium producing it. Harry Houdini himself is threatened with "a good beating" for daring to question the vercity of one such medium's claims. The drama! The gossip! No wonder spiritualism had such a hold on society during the 20s and 30s.

Overall, there was a lot more math than I was expecting. I definitely appreciate the candor about her ignorance of quantum physics & thermodynamics (something she and I have in common) as well as her ability to break down the interviews she has with experts into terms a layman interested in pop science can easily grasp. I'm well aware my strengths do not lie in the STEM arena, but I'm still interested! So thanks, Mary Roach, for being the middleman between me and scientific academia.

A footnote that really appealed to me:

"Oh, they're all weird or embarrassing one way or another," said a spokesman [of Harvard Medical School] some years ago when I expressed surprise at Mack's [alien-abduction researcher] tenure. "Besides," he added ominously, "there's a lot of weird science that turns out to be not-so-weird once it's proven."