After her partner Gerald A. Press—a noted Plato scholar and Hunter College philosophy professor—died unexpectedly, science journalist and illustrator Rebecca Coffey found herself confronting highly unusual experiences that challenged her assumptions about cause and effect and even about the nature of everyday reality. Rather than accepting those experiences as evidence of an afterlife or dismissing them as products of grief, she did what journalists do: she investigated.
Pelicans and the Science of Souls is the product of that investigation. By drawing on Press's scholarship about ancient Greek ideas of soul and afterlife and by re-examining quantum theory and its puzzles about entanglement, Coffey approached her increasingly pressing questions not from the perspective of naïve belief but from curiosity and wonder.
Infused with the raw honesty of someone navigating enormous grief and beautifully illustrated throughout with pelicans she had been drawing for Press when he died, Pelicans and the Science of Souls is a thoughtful exploration of love, loss, and the enduring mystery of human connection.
Rebecca Coffey is the author of multiple books of science reporting, fiction, and humor, and has written widely on science and culture for national publications including Scientific American, Discover, Forbes, and Psychology Today.
"A poignant and vulnerable exploration of grief, healing, and inquiry. Blending personal reflection with scientific inquiry, the author weaves together raw emotion and intellectual contemplation, leaving readers to contemplate the mysteries of life, death, and everything in between." — Kelsey Johnson, author, Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos
"This book is a gem. Utterly original, with gorgeously witty illustrations, it deals lightly but profoundly with the processes of grief. It has vast humour and wisdom. Keep it with you always." — Esther Woolfson, Scottish naturalist, author Between Light and Storm: How We Live with Other Species
"It's artful, naked, philosophical, passionately irrational and rational at the same time, and has a wonderful contrast between goofy, playful illustrations and the emotional intensity of memories." — Corey Powell, co-Editor-in-Chief, OpenMind
