Synopses & Reviews
In Cannibals, Joseph S. 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 relates the tragic 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 World War II; and much more.
Cannibals is both a dramatic document and a tool to learn more about this mysterious and little-understood phenomenon.
Synopsis
Twenty collected true accounts of humans eating humans.
About the Author
JOSEPH CUMMINS is the author of The Snow Train, a novel, and the editor of The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told. He lives in New Jersey.
Table of Contents
(ix) Introduction (Part I) PRIMITIVE CANNIBALISM AND HUMAN SACRIFICE (1) Cannibals in the Canyon by Douglas Preston (2) Blood for the Gods by Reay Tannahill (3) Cannibalism Among the Fiji Islanders by Garry Hogg (Part II) CANNIBALISM AND SURVIVAL ON THE HIGH SEAS (4) The Ownership of a Plank by Edward E. Leslie (5) Games of Chance by Nathaniel Philbrick (6) The Custom of the Sea by Neil Hanson (Part III) EPIC TALES OF CANNIBALISM ON LAND (7) Bolters and Bushrangers by Robert Hughes (8) Cannibalism by Scott Cookman
(9) The Forlorn Hope by Peter R. Limburg (10) Alive by Piers Paul Reed (Part IV) CANNIBALISM IN WAR: "A GHASTLY HARVEST" (11) American Indian Cannibalism by William W. Osborn (12) Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism by Yuki Tanaka (13) Manmade Famines by Hans Askenasy, Ph.D. (14) The Slaughter at Wuxuan by Zhengi Yi (Part V) SERIAL CANNIBALS (15) Cruelty Amid Chaos by Moira Martingale (16) Deranged by Harold Schechter (17) Issei Sagawa by Moira Martingale (18) Jeffrey Dahmer by Moira Martingale (Part VI) THE TASTE: HUMAN FLESH AS A DELICACY (19) The Gourmets by Hans Askenasy, Ph.D. (20) One Man's Meal by William B. Seabrook