Cannibals: Shocking True Tales of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea

by Joseph Cummins (Editor)

In CANNIBALS, Joseph Cummins has assembled some of the most dramatic and controversial incidents of cannibalism in history. He draws from a powerful account of the disastrous Donner party expedition in the snows of the Sierra Nevada in 1847; from Nathaniel Philbrick's bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, about the wreck of the whaleship Essex in the South Pacific; and from Piers Paul Read's classic Alive, which tragically relates the aftermath of a 1972 Uruguayan airliner crash in the high Andes.

But Cummins also brings together little-known and equally shocking tales-how marauding gangs of cannibals, circa 1150 A.D., may have destroyed a flourishing southwestern civilization; how modern forensic evidence revealed the horrifying truth behind the vanished 1845 expedition of Arctic explorer John Franklin; how the Japanese practiced ritual cannibalism on Allied soldiers during WWII; and much more.

CANNIBALS is both a dramatic document and a tool to learn more about this mysterious and little-understood activity.

Genres: Nonfiction

271 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Joseph Cummins is the author of numerous books, including Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Elections; A Bloody History of the World, which won the 2010 Our History Project Gold Medal Award; and the forthcoming Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book, I am glad that I am done with it. Perhaps I should have read it a little bit at a time rather than all the way through. By the end I just felt gross! While the acts of cannibalism that occured because of starvation where horrible, at least they were understandable. It was really the other acts that are discussed later in the book through mass hysteria during the Cultural Revolution in China, and, of course, the serial killers that I found particularly disturbing.

During the part on Jeffrey Dahmer they talk about how several jury members needed psychologial counceling after the trial to deal with what they saw and learned about. I might need the same.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection and history of the subject. Some more disturbing than expected. I got some good references to look up for next reads!