Customer Reviews

Bodies We've Buried: Inside the National Forensic Academy, the World's Top CSI Training School

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I reviewed this book for several newspapers and have my full published review posted at my online Science Shelf book review archive, where you can find details to support my conclusion.

The authors (Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch, not Bill Bass who only wrote the foreword) manage the world's premier CSI training program, but they are not trained scientists and sometimes misstate the science. Despite obvious errors (at least to someone with some scientific training), the book is good reading when the authors stick to their personal observations of the famed "Body Farm" and other venues of the ten-week hands-on training course.

They are also not professional authors, and better editing could have helped them avoid some lapses into self-promotion as well the above noted problems with the science. If you like watching the CSI franchise on TV and you're looking for entertainment without absolute accuracy, this book is a good choice.

I have read a number of books on forensics and forensic anthropology and picked up this book eagerly--hoping for insight into the real world of CSI. Unfortunately this book is very poorly written. The legal and grammatical errors were glaring, and made me wonder if anyone at the publisher ever really edited it. It is a dull read, despite the subject-matter, and a hard slog to finish. Shame on Patricia Cornwell for describing it as a "wonderful book"!
If you want to know just how well written, informative and thought-provoking books on this topic can be, let me recommend that you look instead at:
1. Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death by Jessica Snyder Sachs.
2. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.
3. Dead Men Do Tell Tales : The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by William R. Maples, Michael Browning.

The College Of Carnage. The Harvard Of Hellish Violence. The National Forensic Academy has earned many nicknames from its students. In this book, you'll find out why.

'Bodies We've Buried' takes us from day one of classes at this esteemed institution through all ten intensive weeks (two and a half months) of the program. From how to properly use a camera through an extremely detailed description of an actual autopsy (put on a glove and come feel this), the steps of a CSI investigator are outlined chapter by chapter.

Down On The Farm, Diggin Up Bones, It's A Rigorous Job But Someone's Got To Do It, Vinyl Resting Place, Heart Strings, and Spatter Up! are the best chapters in the book, gruesome and filled with extremely grisly details. These are the chapters that focus on dead bodies, blood splatter, bones, and "human effluence" of crime scenes.

There are also chapters on arson and bombings. (Did you know that there are five degrees of burns and not just three? The last two occur after death) The leading chapters tend to be the most boring, like the authors were warming up to a subject. Stick through the details of photography and fingerprinting to get to the "meat" of the subject. The authors themselves tend to become more relaxed as the subjects get gorier. There's lots of pictures, though very few are of the gruesome nature (but look out, some of them are!).

The details of this book show the tremendous impact that a good CSI can have on a crime scene, and the problems that an untrained CSI can inadvertently cause. I can hardly imagine spending two and a half months in the intensive training program that these dedicated people go through. Though close to being a technical novel, I ate this book up in a single day - it's that interesting.

There's a detailed Glossary of terms, a "Who's Who In Forensic Investigation" giving specific titles of who handles what evidence, a Resources bibliography, Acknowledgements, and an extensive Index. If your truly into the field of dead bodies, then this book is worth the hardcover price, otherwise wait for the paperback. Also, check out 'Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers' by Mary Roach. Enjoy!

This gem gives readers a look inside the National Forensic Science Institute. This is where students are trained in burial recovery with actual human/animal remains. These are the things that are normally off-limits to anyone outside of law enforcements, medical fields, scientists, and the like.

***** Within these pages are detailed studies, complete with photos, on blood spatters, arson, organic decomposition, photo evidence, DNA, and so much more. It was written by two instructors, so all the information is dead on (no pun intended) and quite unnerving at times. I found this book to be so intense that I could have almost used it as a textbook. With the photos to show me exactly what was being explained (in text) to me, I could easily see everything being played out in my mind's eye.

This is all VERY realistic and hard-hitting even though I was never (physically) at any real crime scene. One thing is for sure, I will never look at the world in the same way again. This book is going onto my Keeper Shelf and, I have no doubts, I will be referring back to it during many TV or movie scenes. (Why? To see if the evidence and the recovery of all the evidence, were really researched or simply thrown together in hope that no one above the intelligence of a slug would check behind the makers.) Highly recommended as a beginners reference or simply for those who want to know the truth. *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Okay, the authors were a little full of themselves, and yes, the text was tedious in places, but overall, this is an interesting book about a unique program.

It also described the Body Farm from an outsider's angle, and their descriptions of how they staged crime scenes were hilarious at times. Black humor is necessary to do a job like this, and this book was full of it.

Warning: some sections are not for the squeamish, but you probably knew that when you saw the book's title.

I wasnt expecting the book to be about the school- I was more expecting it to detail the lessons etc ( which it did- just not as in depth as I thought it would). Overall though it was from a great seller and a good book.

The creators of the NFA in Tennessee did police departments in this country and the world a great service. Opened my eyes to the innovation and genius of the pioneers in this field.

For any CSI show fans this book tells you the real story about forensic science. The world of a CSI is not as glamorous as the TV networks want you to believe. And with an upcoming shortage in forensic experts this book is a wakeup call that we need to encourage more people to go into this line of work if we want to continue to catch criminals.

I received this book as a Christmas gift. I'm an armchair forensic anthropologist who worked as a medical editor in a burn hospital for several years. This book is so rife with grammatical/editing errors and incorrect facts that I simply could not finish reading it. I'm sure it has many valuable and accurate facts, but how can you trust what they have written when, in the chapter on Fire and Burns, they describe the burn severity scale completely wrong? That's basic science, and these folks didn't do their research. I also found the chapters dealing with the famous Body Farm and corpses in general to be sensationalistic and juvenile: "This was the grossest thing we'd ever seen at the Body Farm... It smelled like the nastiest blue cheese ever. We don't eat blue cheese any more."

An untrustworthy, poorly written, layman's take on what can be the fascinating field of forensics. Stick with the greats of the field: Bill Bass, Arpad Vass, Doug Ubelaker, William Maples, Stan Rhine.

Since I have been through this academy, I have found this book to be helpful in my day to day actions in my career. The academy itself is a great training experience and allows for veterans as well as new Detective's to gain new ideas and pratices to take back home to their communitites. Jarrett and Amy are both great persons who help and create a memorable experience at the academy. If you are thinking of going through the academy or if your just looking for a great read and to gain some new ideas you have picked the right book.

I bought this for my wife, she went to UT and was a student of Dr. Bass. Very technical information, anyone with an interest in forensics should read this book.