Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780871404541)

The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain, and boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most distinctive attribute and connects our inner selves to the outer world. Yet there is a dark side to the head's preeminence, one that has, in the course of human history, manifested itself in everything from decapitation to headhunting. So explains anthropologist Frances Larson in this fascinating history of decapitated human heads. From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, Larson explores our macabre fixation with severed heads.

Author: Frances Larson
ISBN-10: 0871404540
ISBN-13: 9780871404541
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 11/17/2014
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.00w x 1.30d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/01/2014
Discover 11/01/2014 pg. 68
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2014
New York Times Book Review 12/07/2014 pg. 83
Chronicle of Higher Education 12/05/2014 pg. 13
Shelf Awareness 12/16/2014
New Yorker (The) 01/12/2015 pg. 71