Reviews for A search for civilization

The average rating for A search for civilization based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-04 00:00:00 John Doe Are no sparkly or sexy vampires here; not even any who wear evening dress and travel with coffins of dirt. This nonfiction book explores the very roots of the vampire legend and ties it to the unexpected things that dead bodies can do and how the people of yesterday interpreted those things. The average corpse does certain things: the face turns pale and waxy, the limbs become rigid, the blood coagulates, and it lays silent and unmoving. But not all corpses follow those rules; depending on how the person died, they may have a red face. After a certain point, rigor leaves and the body becomes limp again. The blood does not always coagulate. A corpse filled with gasses from decay may make sounds when moved or prodded. These things are explainable through science today, but weren't 500 or more years ago. The book reads like a master's or doctoral thesis: Barber makes his points clearly and presents well researched proof to back them. While much of his research was in folklore, he has also gone to the experts in dead bodies: coroners and medical examiners. He's got the facts down cold: the physical signs of bodies that were declared vampires or revenants could all be explained by science. The stories that grew around them, of course, were all human imagination. If a body could groan and move and bleed, why couldn't it be what was making trouble at night in the village? I'm not going to say that lovers of vampire novels will like this book (I'm not saying they won't, either). Lovers of folklore and human nature will. A warning: the descriptions of dead bodies are very graphic, although certainly not sensational. It's all presented in a dry, just the facts manner, but very interesting.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-17 00:00:00 Andrew Woodward Barber presents a rather convincing and interesting theory in this book, arguing that vampire legends and folklore developed as a means to expalin decomposition. The book is worth a read not only for the theory but als because of the amount of translation and sources that Barber looks at. If you are a fan of sexy vampires, you should skip this book.