This riveting account of medical detective work traces the story of kuru, a fatal brain disease, and the pioneering scientists who spent decades searching for its cause and cure. Winner, William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine Winner, Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Winner, General History Award, New South Wales Premier's History Awards When whites first encountered the Fore people in the isolated highlands of colonial New Guinea during the 1940s and 1950s, they found a people in the grip of a bizarre epidemic. Women and children succumbed to muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, and lack of coordination, until death inevitably supervened. Facing extinction, the Fore attributed their unique and terrifying affliction to a particularly malign form of sorcery. In The Collectors of Lost Souls, Warwick Anderson tells the story of the resilience of the Fore through this devastating plague, their transformation into modern people, and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologists. Battling competing scientists and the colonial authorities, the brilliant and troubled American doctor D. Carleton Gajdusek determined that the cause of the epidemic—kuru—was a new and mysterious agent of infection, which he called a slow virus (now called a prion). Anthropologists and epidemiologists soon realized that the Fore practice of eating their loved ones after death had spread the slow virus. Though the Fore were never convinced, Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Now revised and updated, the book includes an extensive new afterword that situates its impact within the fields of science and technology studies and the history of science. Additionally, the author now reflects on his long engagement with the scientists and the people afflicted, describing what has happened to them since the end of kuru. This astonishing story links first-contact encounters in New Guinea with laboratory experiments in Bethesda, Maryland; sorcery with science; cannibalism with compassion; and slow viruses with infectious proteins, reshaping our understanding of what it means to do science.

Meet Sam Thornton, Collector of Souls. Sam’s job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure their souls are dispatched to the appropriate destination. But when he’s dispatched to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that’s doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before. “No.” File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Souled Out | Damned If You Don’t | Collector Mania | On The Run ] e-book ISBN: 978-0-85766-219-4 From the Paperback edition.

Ghosts aren’t meant to stick around forever... Shelly and her grandmother catch ghosts. In their hair. Just like all the women in their family, they can see souls who haven’t transitioned yet; it’s their job to help the ghosts along their journey. When Shelly’s mom dies suddenly, Shelly’s relationship to ghosts—and death—changes. Instead of helping spirits move on, Shelly starts hoarding them. But no matter how many ghost cats, dogs, or people she hides in her room, Shelly can’t ignore the one ghost that’s missing. Why hasn’t her mom’s ghost come home yet? Rooted in a Cree worldview and inspired by stories about the author’s great-grandmother’s life, The Ghost Collector delves into questions of grief and loss, and introduces an exciting new voice in tween fiction that will appeal to fans of Kate DiCamillo’s Louisiana’s Way Home and Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls.

Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.

A 'Wunderkammer', or 'cabinet of curiosities', was an encyclopaedic collection of controversial, yet-to-be-defined objects, including Cyclopes, Siamese twins and other infants with fatal genetic disorders. Herzog visited these Renaissance collections, photographing the mysteries they contain. Although for years they have been preserved as scientific specimens, they are profoundly transformed through Herzog's lens into a mirror reflecting human fears. Also included are images of skeletons and bones of various creatures and other unusual objects on display.