Edwin Murphy

This book took me a long time to read because I had to keep stopping and share stories with my friends and coworkers. Did you know that Roger Williams's corpse was eaten by an apple tree and all that was left was a Roger-shaped tree root? (Suspicious of that story, I asked my father, a PhD botanist, if such a thing could happen. He assured me it could.) Did you know that Dorothy Parker's ashes sat in a filing cabinet for years because no one could decide what to do with them? This is an show more amusing, eye-opening and not at all depressing book. show less

A good, scholarly contribution to an often neglected book of the oft-neglected Diodorus of Sicily. His translation is smooth and true to the original text, and his footnotes are illuminating. Diodorus often exaggerates his descriptions and narratives of the history of Asia, and Murphy does well to point out when and how he does. Where the book falters, however, is in his citation. I would have liked to follow up where he obtained much of the information he provides in his footnotes, but his show more citations are few and far between. This takes away from the work as a valuable piece of secondary literature on the subject, which is a shame. Moreover, his bibliography, while impressive, lacks many articles and in-depth studies, and tends to focus more on general readers and translations of other primary sources--a plus for someone just getting into the field of ancient history, but for a scholar, this is disappointing. show less

This book, which describes some of the bizarre things that have happened to corpses and body parts of famous dead people, was an interesting read. I sort of had to ignore, at times, that the stories were about dead bodies - some of the things were just too gruesome to contemplate. But there is a lot of interesting history here, and some crazy stories.

This is an anecdotal collection of stories about post mortem activities of the bodies of famous people. The book is exactly as the title describes. While one could wish it were more scholarly, it is nevertheless, interesting, amusing, and informative. I would not use this as a definitive source; I would seek secondary corroboration before using these stories in anything serious.