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Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson is about the fascination we have with heads, ours and others. Over the centuries, human heads have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums. Long regarded as objects of fascination and repulsion, they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and scientists promise the wealthy among us that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever.