Empire of Skulls

The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

“A thoroughly researched and intriguing work.” —Jennifer Wright, The New York Times Book Review

“While he presents a serious slice of American history, Mr. Stob is clearly having fun with his topic … [His] approach makes for an entertaining narrative.” —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

“This captivating, well-researched chronicle traces the rise and fall of the Fowler family’s kingdom of phrenology … A fascinating, entertaining, and enlightening work.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Due to its lack of actual scientific value, phrenology is now dismissed as an oddity, but Stob sheds light on the complexity of the movement’s narrative. More than a tale of misguidance and gullibility, Empire of Skulls is an exploration of the lengths we’ll go in the name of self-improvement.” —Virginia Reeves, BookPage

“Captivatingly bizarre … [A] morbidly fascinating tale of obsession.” —Publishers Weekly

“Stob, a professor of communication at Vanderbilt University, casts a spell with his humorous, witty storytelling and cinematic descriptions of a bygone era … A fascinating tale of a nation gripped and shaped by a science/health fad that resonates today.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In this original and compelling book, Paul Stob sheds light on a forgotten but vital moment in American life. Absorbing, eloquent, and insightful, Empire of Skulls is nonfiction at its best, an indelible tale that surprises, entertains, and instructs.” —Jon Meacham, author of The Call to Serve: The Life of an American President, George Herbert Walker Bush

“With vivid characters and propulsive storytelling, Empire of Skulls reveals how phrenology became entangled with the era’s most urgent questions about human nature, social reform, and American destiny. The Fowlers’ saga—by turns inspiring, troubling, and darkly comical—shows us a young nation desperate to understand itself, willing to believe that the secrets of human potential lay just beneath the surface of the skin. Paul Stob has created a masterful blend of biography, cultural history, and scientific detective story.” —Michael Bess, author of Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future

“Empire of Skulls is a riveting account of how one entrepreneurial family mastered the business of science nearly two centuries before today’s wellness craze. Full of warmth and wit, Paul Stob’s brilliant storytelling puts our hands on the bumps and creases of the nineteenth-century American mind.” —Daniel J. Sharfstein, author of Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War

Paul Stob is Director of the Program in American Studies at Vanderbilt University, where he also teaches in the Department of Communication Studies and the Program in the Communication of Science and Technology. His research and teaching focus on American intellectual culture in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the connection between reading, writing, and lecturing as well as religion, democracy, populism, and social movements. He is co-author (with Stephen Lucas) of The Art of Public Speaking (McGraw-Hill), which is now in its fourteenth edition and sells well over 100K copies a year in various print and electronic editions. Empire of Skulls is his first trade book.

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