Rachel Clarke uses contrast as a tool to praise the book called Morbid. Reviewing Morbid, for The Guardian, Clarke writes:
These are startling allegations, especially when made by someone whose Amazon author page reads as though it was aiming for whimsy, but written on acid. Among other things, Newman has “met a man with walrus-skull book-ends, saved two people from drowning … got run over by a moped, stuck his arm in a giant clam, got hit full in the face with a pavlova.” My unease grew at his publisher, MIT Press, describing the book as a descent “into amusing, if edifying, chaos”. I am a curmudgeon who seeks from nonfiction not chaos, but education and inspiration. MIT Press sells its author short, though – because that is exactly what this intriguing, eccentric book provides.
Saul Newman, the book’s author, was awarded the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize for demography, “for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.” Newman’s book further explores the research honored by that prize.
