books

Does Mary Roach have a death wish or what? She follows up a book about cadavers with a book about ghosts, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (W.W. Norton). In London, Roach tries to talk psychiatrist Karl Jansen into being her spotter during a ketamine-induced near-death experience. At Canada's obscure Consciousness Research Lab, doctors strap her to a chair in a soundproof chamber and send electromagnetic pulses into her brain, trying to induce ghostly hallucinations. After studying the many travel options for the dead bodies in Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, here Roach looks at the places the soul can go, or more skeptically, whether the soul even exists.

With a dry wit and a keen eye for observation, she tackles historical tidbits, like Duncan MacDougall's early-20th-century experiments to weigh the human spirit, as well as offbeat currents like a "Medium School." Even when she's bitingly cynical, Roach is always open to and respectful of her subjects -- a visit to India makes her go loopy over the culture's celebration of reincarnation. Her appearance at Friends Select will allow the author to elaborate on her postmortem preoccupation. And it'll give us the chance to ask what was going through her mind as she handled an archived specimen of 65-year-old ectoplasm.

Mary Roach, Wed., Oct. 26, 7 p.m., free, Blauvelt Theatre, Friends Select School, 17th St. and the Parkway, 215-561-5900.