All That Remains: A Life in Death

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For example, dismembering a body in certain ways cases too much leakage, making it harder to move and there really is a best way to remove a human head. Unless the author is chasing money in which case it will be a Twilight situation with a million teenage vampire romances. 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. Although her job is difficult, she is aware of the great honour and responsibility it entails to the family members of the missing person.

In All that Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and what her work has taught her. Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction 2019, this incredible memoir from the Sunday Times Bestseller Professor Sue Black breathes new life into the subject of death.

After three hot summer months, they were now “boiling with maggots, fragmented and partly scattered and eaten by the scavenging animals”.

It doesn’t creep her out to think of that, no more than it did to meet her future cadaver, a matter-of-fact, curious elderly gentleman named Arthur. From 2003 to 2018 she was Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee. 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.I like the way she thinks, love her humor and am amazed at her tolerance for incredibly trying situations. I spend the day in a soft space where there is a sense of safety and calm…While occupying each box, I am aware that I am striving to be an inert observer. The best book I've ever read on anatomy and death (and philosophy, in the form of thoughful essays) is by F. 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. 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.

The harrowing stories of her involvement in identifying mountains of bones in charred buildings in Kosovo in the 90’s or in body identification after the Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand are the most powerful and moving parts of the book, these have an emotional immediacy to them that other parts of the book lack. She gives background on the profession and the day-to-day expectations in her various careers, combined with her roles as a mother, grandmother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and mentor. Every person in the world will experience a time when someone close to us dies, including the funeral and coming to terms with it and mourning, so talking about this at length seemed a bit pointless.What surprises me, is that she can walk into an area where there are many fatalities, including women and children, who have been through needless suffering, but she is scared shitless of rats. The book has the feel of the author having referred to an exacting diary because it is so well-written, coherent, and put together. To książka autobiograficzna Sue Black, w której niewiele znalazło się miejsca dla opisania pracy antropologa sądowego, za to historie rodzinne autorki ciągną się całymi rozdziałami.

This is a very personal look at the many faces of death as described by one of Britain’s leading forensic anthropologists, and covers everything from the various ways a body can be buried or preserved, what happens to a body after death, and how forensic anthropologists can establish any number of things about an individual from their remains. I also had difficulties with the times she posed her opinion as fact, a trap for non-fiction authors. It's a mish-mash of history, science, memoir, police investigations, cold cases, natural disasters, education and invention.She always operates from a place of the utmost respect and – in a strange way – love for the remains of the people in her care. She is able to compartmentalise the pain, suffering and harrowing violence done to people by other people into a locked room in her brain. And what if you want to live, but other people decide you have no value, that you're a "useless feeder" as Hitler termed it. How can it be otherwise when you meet a man who lost 11 members of his family to an RPG, including 8 children, one a baby, and struggled to find pieces of their bodies to bury while bleeding out from being shot by a sniper himself?