At first I was sceptic towards this book. Most books on the subject of Death and Afterlife fail to keep an objective point of view and are coloured by the author's religious beliefs. However, this book pleasantly surprised me. It starts with a discussion around the definition of death and then goes through all forms of Death (violent, suicide, euthanasia etc) to what lies beyond. I enjoyed that book, although I think that some people may find some photos disturbing. But, in the long run, Death was never meant to be a pleasant subject.

You won't find this information in even the most recent sciencetexts! You learned in school that all energy for life on earth can betraced back to the sun. This belief was revised after the 1977 discovery of deep ocean hydrothermal vent communities where populations of organisms owe their existence to hydrogen sulfide feeding bacteria. The book progresses from discovery to research into the geology, chemistry, and biology of this most interesting ecosystem. Numerous color photographs and detailed illustrations accompany the text. I especially enjoyed seeing the names and faces of the many scientists who have helped reveal the secrets of this submarine environment. This book would make an excellent supplement in a science classroom and no school library would be complete without it! Move over photosynthesis, chemosynthesis rules!

This is a good introductory book for children with a beginning interest in learning more about the Himalayan Abominable Snowmen (Yeti), Chinese Wildmen (Yeren), Asian Almas, North American Bigfoot (Sasquatch), and Brian Innes's apparent theory that they all (!) may be Neandertals. The gaps are minor - a couple of allegedly hoaxed photographs are included (an Ivan Marx "Bigfoot" on a rock ledge and the de Loys's "ape"). But those pictures don't distract from this being a short (42 pages of text with 33 images) volume that hits the goal of overviewing a complex subject nicely. School libraries should buy this book to support the curious minds of budding biologists, anthropologists, and cryptozoologists. For the young readers that start here, they will want to move on to The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (Avon 1999; 224 pp) next to learn another view - that all of these "giant humanlike beasts" are not just the same thing, not a single species, and some may indeed be Gigantopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo erestus, as well.

my dad wrote this book i like it i read it alot all of you people should buy it!Its awsome!

An amazing amount of information packed into 48 pages. A good "tease" to whet the appetites of upper elementary & mid school students, the age at which they begin to be interested in unexplained phenomena. Similar to Cohen's books, which are always popular. Contents include information about twins, fish and eggs raining from the sky, and other tidbits about topics such as the Loch Ness monster.

Hello... my 5th grade class is doing unsolved mysteriesprojects. So I chose Water Monsters...Gathering my information at the library I checked out a book called Water Monsters. It was a very nice book. It talkes about different leaguins,history, and differnt Creatures...like the Loch Ness Monstser, the Giant Squid, and other mysterious sightings... I really enjoyed reading this Easy-to-read, filled with facts BOOK!!

This book was fair to midlin, depending on the perspective of the reader. I usually read for entertainment and to learn and the factual information presented was good. However, for a layperson like myself, I found much of the information on DNA and other crime solving techniques very confusing. It made me wonder how juries ever can understand it all. At times throughout the book, one would have to be a chemist to understand. Despite that, there were good portions that were both interesting and instructional. Anyone interested in forensics would just love this book. It is complete with pictures (some gruesome) and many different criminal investigative techniques. If you are reading this book because this is your field, it would be a five star book, if you are reading this book solely for entertainment - skip it, if you are reading this book in the hopes of committing a crime and getting away with it, it won't happen. But, if you are like me and are reading for both pleasure and knowledge, it's worth your time and effort.

"Bodies of Evidence" is a Reader's Digest book about forensic science, featuring more than a hundred true crimes and many gory, full-color photographs. It's definitely not a text-book, but more of an overview of different methods of forensic detection. I didn't find the explanations particularly clear, and the cases chosen to illustrate the detective work were the usual, tried and true (or tried and convicted) Dr. Buck Ruxton, Aunt Thally and her poison tea, Sacco and Vanzetti, etc. The 'Boston Strangler' case was used as an example in the 'Suffocation and Strangulation' section, but no mention was made of the fact that DNA analysis has recently been used to clear Albert DeSalvo of at least one of the murders.

For those who are following the Chandra Levy case, "Bodies of Evidence" will provide an overview of the forensic techniques that the Washington D.C. police force may be employing.

The body of the book is divided into the following chapters, each with lots of illustrations and a case history or two: "Gathering the Evidence;" "Suicide or Murder?;" "Mark of Death (Physical assault, bruising);" "With Poison Deadly;" "Skull and Bones;" "Breath of Life (death by oxygen deprivation);" "Worm in the Flesh (decomposition, insect traces);" "Finger of Suspicion (fingerprints);" "Written in Blood;" "DNA Fingerprinting;" "Hanging by a Hair;" "The Speeding Bullet;" "Fire and Destruction;" "Fragments of Evidence (broken glass, paint fragments, etc);" "Speaking Likeness (voice prints);" "The Guilty Party (handwriting, identity parades, etc.);" "The Forensic Hardware (hi-tech methods and devices such as Neutron Activation, Mass Spectrometry, etc.);"

One minor criticism---I wish the publishers hadn't decided to stamp "CASE CLOSED" over the actual text of the case. It made the case histories slightly hard to read.

Not for the faint of heart, this book contains a fair amount of somewhat graphic photographs accompanying the text. While to be sure, this is not an in-depth thesis of forensics, for what it is, which is a layman's overview of forensic methods and detection, it is quite good. The font of the text and the book layout make it very comfortable to browse, and you may find yourself reading quite a lot in one sitting. Overall, very enjoyable, but don't expect a really deep book

This book is not some how to book designed for the S & M fan or a third world dictator learning the ropes, but an interesting look at the use of torture throughout history. It covers the use of torture from the ancient Greece civilization through the Spanish Inquisition right into the UK, all the while showing that at the time these methods of "punishment" were socially acceptable forms of punishment. The authors even look at mental torture and how it is used in societies today.

This book does not give the reader a detailed, analytical account of why societies over the years have resorted to torture or why man can perform such cruelty on his fellow man. That review would probably take a number of volumes to cover. The book just provides what people have done in the past in regards to torture / punishment, which was almost always state sponsored or directed. The book is designed as an overview and the reader looking for deep discussions on any one topic will be disappointed. Overall it provides the reader a good overview of the topic. If you are interested in crime and punishment this will be an interesting book for you.

The book is divided in 13 chapters; each of one about one era (inquisition, greece & rome, africa, etc). and explains how the torture was implemented in that era, and the reasons behind it.
I expected an history (that was the title, isn't it?) about how it "grows" and how it becomes "different" since the first ages to modern age.
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El libro est‡ dividido en 13 cap'tulos; cada uno acerca de una Žpoca (inquisici-n, Grecia y Roma, Africa, etc) y explica como la tortura se implement- en aquella Žpoca, y las razones que hab'a detras de ella.
Esperaba una historicidad (ese es el titulo, no?) acerca de como evolucion- y cambi- desde la era antigua a la actual.

An extensive overview of torture, containing much photographic and illustrative detail. The sections range from torture in ancient Greece and Rome, the Far East, the Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, instruments of torture (such as the infamous Spanish "strappado") torture in the twentieth century, the campaign against torture (spearheaded by the likes of Voltaire and Edmund Burke) and psychological torture -- "the torture of the mind" -- i.e., brainwashing and the like.

This book is one of the many on the Bermuda Triangle that is more interested in acting puzzled over "disappearances" than actually doing any investigation or research. Many of the so-called "mysterious" disappearances are in fact only mysterious because the author couldn't be bothered to check the facts, presumably relying on second-, third-, or fourth-hand accounts. The gold standard for books on this topic is Larry Kusche's "Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved." That is an example of how a little careful scholarship clears up decades of mystery.

It was Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat

This book-I bought the hardcover-looks like it's for a kid's library. Large type, big pictures taking up a lot of page room, and a guestimate work count of less than 5000 make for a "lite" read at best. You can go cover to cover in about ten minutes. Still at this price, the paperback is an okay deal.