The Mummy Congress: Science, Obession, and the Everlasting Dead Book

Science journalist Heather Pringle provides a lively and entertaining report on the status of mummies in the new millennium. Filled with history, clever character sketches, curiosities and fascinations - the pages turn at a swift clip to address not only the Egyptian standard, but mummies from around the globe.

Were you aware of the discovery of an entire community of well-preserved Caucasian corpses (circa twenty-first century B.C.) in the northwestern corner of China? Good, because the Chinese government would prefer you not be. What's going on with Lenin's remains in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union? What about those bodies rising from the depths of Britain's bogs? The Roman Catholic Incorruptibles? Is there still a black market mummy trade? Cryogenics, anyone?

We are weird, weird people and mummies serve to celebrate this. So climb aboard the crazy train for roughly three hundred pages. Might as well have fun with it.