The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle will make you wish you had gone to college to learn how to study mummies--not that a college will teach you such an occupation. Pringle has traveled around the world to track down almost every important researcher working with mummies today.

Her entry into the world of mummy studies occurs in 1998 at the Third World Congress on Mummy Studies, held in Arica, Chile, home of the Atacama Desert and many mummies. There, she meets many of the researchers who have spent their lives pursuing what many believe is an odd occupation: studying the preserved bodies of the dead.

In subsequent chapters, Pringle visits many of these researchers in their workplaces and labs. She reviews the nature of their research, airs their concerns and hopes, and considers the value of their work (especially if it is controversial). 

Although the book reads like a series of magazine articles that have been collected in one volume (a minor problem that is easily forgivable), each chapter is rich in details and provides an overview of a particular type of mummy or mummymaking civilization in clear, understandable language. This more than makes up for any structural artifice.

Stand-out chapters include: (1) Johan Reinhard and Juanita (a critical look at what happens when then National Geographic subsidizes mummy expeditions), (2) Vladimir Lenin and his embalmers (a fascinating look at the need to make Lenin's mummy a permanent political fixture), and (3) George Gliddon, a British Egyptologist (a chilling discussion of a "scientist" who tried to prove his racist views through the study of Egyptian mummies). Along the way, she also tells a number of intriguing mini- mummy stories (Jeremy Bentham, John Paul Jones, and Enrico Caruso among others). 

But my own personal favorite is a chapter near the end that blends a discussion of the Chinchorro mummies with that of the fate of the Inkan mummies destroyed by Pizarro and later representatives of the Catholic Church. I have never come across a clearer, more vivid account of what actually happened. This chapter clearly shows Pringle's strengths as a writer.

My only real complaint about the book is that Pringle does not document her sources throughout the chapters (or even in endnotes). An extensive bibliography is included, but if you'd like to know the source of her information as you read a chapter, precious little information is given. Occasionally, the reader can glean a source, but that is the exception. 

Near the end of the book, Pringle writes: 

"Mummies have always spoken to us on some deep primal level, and we are simply unable to leave them alone. We love them and we fear them, we aspire to be them and we dread that fate. But one thing is certain: we are powerless to resist their potent appeal" (pp. 338-39).

I feel quite the same about this book: though I have some minor reservations about it, in the end I was powerless to resist its many charms. Quite simply, Pringle presents an engaging, panoramic view of the phenomenon of mummies and the emerging science of mummy studies. That alone makes this a book anyone interested in mummies won't want to miss.

The book includes 26 photos (most in color) including Egyptian mummies (from Kellis and worth the price of the book alone), Chinchorro mummies, bog bodies, Cherchen Man and child, Incan sacrifices, St. Zita, and Stalin. The cover photo is also eye-catching: Egyptian mummies lined up waiting to be x-rayed.