The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain & boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most distinctive attribute & it connects our inner selves to the outer world more evocatively than any other part of the body. Yet there is a dark side to the head`s pre-eminence. Over the centuries, human heads have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls & filled our museums. Long regarded as objects of fascination & repulsion, they have been props for artists & specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers & items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online & scientists promise the wealthy among us that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious & compelling as ever. From the western colonialists whose demand for shrunken heads spurred brutal massacres to the troops in the Second World War who sent the remains of Japanese soldiers home to their girlfriends; from the memento mori in Romantic portraits to Damien Hirst`s With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising cryonicists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome & confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.