Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Risking Life for Death - Lessons for the Living from the Autopsy Table - cover

Risking Life for Death - Lessons for the Living from the Autopsy Table

Ryan Blumenthal

Publisher: Jonathan Ball

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Every contact leaves a trace: a single strand of hair or a tiny droplet of blood can be the silent witness at a crime scene.
Locard's Exchange Principle underpins all forensic science and holds that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it.
Forensic experts use this principle daily to catch murderers and assailants. In Risking Life for Death, South African forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal offers a master class in this singular forensic technique based on real-life case studies. With more than twenty years' experience in the field, Blumenthal explains how to look for clues and traces, and how what he does not find at autopsy is often more important than what he does find. In other words, the absence of evidence can sometimes be of greater value than the presence of evidence.
His account also highlights the dangers forensic pathologists are exposed to daily. As they try to unravel the puzzle of someone's death, forensic pathologists often face life-threatening infections, toxic gases and the hazards associated with high-profile cases – in effect, risking their life to solve someone else's death.
An understanding of Locard's Exchange Principle can help you become a medical detective in your own life, can help you be a happier person and can even provide you with a better philosophy for growing older, Blumenthal argues.
Available since: 07/03/2023.
Print length: 224 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Copper Scroll Project - An Ancient Secret Fuels the Battle for the Temple Mount - cover

    The Copper Scroll Project - An...

    Shelley Neese

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The history behind the Copper Scroll and the true story of Jim Barfield’s quest for its treasure.Whether the objects are of legend or history, certain ancient mysteries arrest the imaginations of every generation. These antiquities refuse to be forgotten by the human spirit—hidden sufficiently to evade discovery, but historically prominent enough to leave a smattering of clues. Many explorers have fallen prey to fortune’s siren call, spending their lifetimes searching for the artifacts that promise to alter human history.The Copper Scroll Project is a relative newcomer to the modern treasure hunt. Part of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection, the Copper Scroll is unlike any of the leather and papyrus documents, though not simply for its copper plates. The relic reads like a coded map, listing dozens of hiding spots where tithes and vessels thought to be secreted from the Jewish Temple were stored for safekeeping. More than fifty years after archaeologists found this unique artifact in a cave near Qumran, four adventurers have dared to chase after the scroll’s priceless relics.“A unique introduction not only to a famous biblical mystery but to the world of American Christian interest in Israel, which remains opaque or bewildering to many outsiders, and is often caricatured.”—Matti Friedman, author of The Aleppo Codex“Equal parts mystery, treasure hunt and erudite elucidation of biblical history.”—Chanan Tigay, author of The Last Moses “Neese’s narrative pacing and story-telling is masterful. She gets the political and religious nuances of contemporary Israel.”—Elliot Jager, Jerusalem-based author and former editorial page editor at The Jerusalem Post
    Show book
  • Seven Seas Nine Lives - The Valour of Captain AWF Sutton CBE DSC and Bar RN - cover

    Seven Seas Nine Lives - The...

    Richard Pike

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Captain Alan William Frank Sutton's enthralling biography starts when, as a young midshipman he was in command of a small rowing cutter returning a potentially mutinous crew to the battle-cruiser HMS Repulse in which he served. Amazingly it ends in the open cockpit of a Fairy Swordfish torpedo bomber during the legendry night attack which destroyed the Italian fleet at Taranto.This biography has been written with the full cooperation of Captain Sutton who has given the author every detail of his lengthy naval ship and airborne career during World War II.
    Show book
  • Readings in Wood - What the Forest Taught Me - cover

    Readings in Wood - What the...

    John Leyland

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    “[Leland] brings the botanical into direct relationship with the spiritual, using a prose style that is as profound as it is pyrotechnic.” —Jim Warren, Washington and Lee University 
     
    Award-winning nature writer John Leland offers a collection of twenty-seven short, poetic essays that marry science and the humanities as the author seeks meaning in trees. Readings in Wood is an investigation of trees and forests and also of wood as a material that people have found essential in the creation of society and culture. Leland views with wit and erudition the natural world and the curious place of human beings as saviors and destroyers of this world. 
     
    At once personal memoir, natural history, and cultural criticism, the book reflects Leland’s idiosyncratic vision. As vast as a forest, topics range from tree grain and leaf shape to economic theories, mathematics, and engineering. Readings in Wood is a hybrid testament of science, faith, superstition, and disbelief learned from sitting on tree trunks and peering at leaves and fungi. Leland hopes others will join him in nature’s classroom. Quite aware of the irony, he reminds us, “These leaves you desultorily turn over once hung in a green wood gone to make this book. Touching a book, you touch a tree. I pray that Readings in Wood’s essays, touching you, may justify in some small way the trees who died in their making.” 
     
    “This book constitutes a hymn to the technical and the beautiful, a meander through the geography, geology, botany, mathematics and vigor of our plants, especially in the southern Appalachians.” —R. T. Smith, editor, Shenandoah, and writer-in-residence, Washington and Lee University 
     
    “Informative, thoughtful, inspiring, and innately entertaining.” —The Midwest Book Review
    Show book
  • The Endless Knot - K2 Mountain of Dreams and Destiny - cover

    The Endless Knot - K2 Mountain...

    Kurt Diemberger

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    'A monumental book … I defy anyone to read it and remain unmoved.' Stephen Venables, Alpine Journal Acclaimed as one of the most powerful accounts of mountain adventure and tragedy ever written, The Endless Knot is a harrowing account of the 1986 K2 disaster. A rare first-hand account from a survivor at the very epicentre of the drama, The Endless Knot describes the disaster in frank detail. Kurt Diemberger's account of the final days of success, accident, storm and escape during which five climbers died, including his partner Julie Tullis and the great British mountaineer Al Rouse, is lacerating in its sense of tragedy, loss and dogged survival. Only Diemberger and Willi Bauer escaped the mountain. K2 had claimed the lives of 13 climbers that summer. Kurt Diemberger is one of only two climbers to have made first ascents of two 8000-metre peaks, Broad Peak and Dhaulagiri. A superb mountaineer, the K2 trauma left him physically and emotionally ravaged, but it also marked him out as an instinctive and tenacious survivor. After a long period of recovery Diemberger published The Endless Knot and resumed life as a mountaineer, filmmaker and international lecturer.
    Show book
  • The Girl Guards of Wyoming - The Lost Women's Militia - cover

    The Girl Guards of Wyoming - The...

    Dan J Lyom

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    In the summer of 1890, an army of teenage women with swords drawn and rifles at the ready marched resolutely toward the state capitol to deliver a message to Governor Francis E. Warren and the nation: women want equal rights. As Company K walked alongside women's suffrage pioneer Esther Morris, one could hear the rhythm of their feet keeping step in perfect cadence. Western history remembers murderers, outlaws, prostitutes and saloon girls but not the famous Girl Guards, whose military precision rivaled that of West Point cadets. Author Dan J. Lyon offers the definitive and evocative account of the young women warriors who defined the Equality State.
    Show book
  • Newtown - An American Tragedy - cover

    Newtown - An American Tragedy

    Matthew Lysiak

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    12/14/2012 
    Sandy Hook Elementary School 
    Newtown, Connecticut 
    We remember the numbers: 20 children and 6 adults, murdered in a place of nurture and trust. We remember the names: teachers like Victoria Soto, who lost her life protecting her students. A shooter named Adam Lanza. And we remember the questions: outraged conjecture instantly monopolized the worldwide response to the tragedy, while the truth went missing. 
    Here is the definitive journalistic account of Newtown, an essential examination of the facts—not only of that horrific day but the perfect storm of mental instability and obsession that preceded it and, in the aftermath of unspeakable heartbreak, the controversy that continues to play out on the national stage. Drawn from previously undisclosed emails, police reports, and in-depth interviews, Newtown: An American Tragedy breaks through a miasma of misinformation with its comprehensive and astonishing portrayal. 
     This is the vital story that must be told today if we are to prevent another American tragedy in the days to come. 
    A portion of the proceeds from this audiobook will be donated to the Avielle Foundation.
    Show book