I found the title obscure and it is not clear whose souls were being alluded to or which of the kuru scientists were turned into white men perhaps obscurity is the point and pondering on this did remind me of the strong exchange relations theme and the powerful voice given to the new guineans throughout the book the author intrudes unnecessarily with time and place when he introduces his . In his book warwick anderson a medical doctor and science historian recounts the complexity of the story by portraying how scientists learned about kuru not what they found out or who got it right anderson offers an absorbing account of kuru that is partly a biography of gajdusek and partly a historical and anthropological story of an encounter between the two worlds of modern biomedicine and a melanesian culture. Facing extinction the fore attributed their unique and terrifying affliction to a particularly malign form of sorcerythe collectors of lost souls tells the story of the resilience of the fore through this devastating plague their transformation into modern people and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologistsbattling competing scientists and the colonial authorities the brilliant and troubled american doctor d carleton . The collectors of lost souls turning kuru scientists into whitemen author warwick anderson publisher the johns hopkins university press baltimore md 2008 isbn 978 0801890406 hardback 328 pages us 2495. In the collectors of lost souls warwick anderson tells the story of the resilience of the fore through this devastating plague their transformation into modern people and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologists battling competing scientists and the colonial authorities the brilliant and troubled american doctor d carleton gajdusek determined that the cause of the epidemic kuru was a new and mysterious agent of