8 Books About Historical Cannibalism

Cannibalism is having a literary moment. From popular titles such as A Certain Hunger, Tender is the Flesh, The Eyes are the Best Part, and The Hunger, readers can’t tear away from flesh-eating fiction. But while many novels employ cannibalism as a device to keep pages during, fiction often has nothing on reality. The books on this list tell the stories of real-life people who, in the face of natural disasters, famines, and shipwrecks, must make an impossible decision: Eat human flesh, or die.

1. Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History // Bill Schutt
2. Jamestown: The Truth Revealed // William M. Kelso
3. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex // Nathaniel Philbrick
4. Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery // Ken McGoogan
5. The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party // Daniel James Brown
6. Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal // Harold Schechter
7. The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin // Douglas Smith
8. Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home // Nando Parrado and Vince Rause

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History // Bill Schutt

In Cannibalism, author and zoologist Bill Schutt argues that across the animal kingdom, cannibalism is a natural phenomenon for many species: Some partake in cannibalism as part of the epic showdown of survival of the fittest, while others’ motives remain mostly unclear. Not even humans are exempt in certain contexts.  In an interview with NPR, Schutt called human cannibalism a “natural behavior,” adding that in situations where people are starving, “At a certain point, one of the predictable behaviors that you’ll see is cannibalism. It could start with dead bodies and then get to the extreme where you kill somebody and eat them. Then there’s the case where some people will just not eat dead bodies and starve to death.” The book also dissects instances of human cannibalism (such as medical cannibalism), including the author’s own sampling of human tissue. “A lot of people have claimed that it tastes like pork or veal, and everything tastes like chicken, I guess,” he told Scientific American. “To me, it didn’t taste like any of those. And I’ll tell you, I cleaned my plate. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

Jamestown: The Truth Revealed // William M. Kelso

Written by the head archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project, Jamestown: The Truth Revealed is a fascinating deep-dive into what really happened during that fateful winter of 1609. It wasn’t until 2012 that definitive evidence of cannibalism during “The Starving Time” was discovered: the skull and leg bone of a 14-year-old girl, which bore marks from sharp metal tools. Kelso takes a close look at the forensics behind this discovery and paints a vivid picture of the harrowing Jamestown winter.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex // Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Heart of the Sea tells the tale of the Essex, which sank in 1820 after being attacked by a sperm whale; Philbrick wrote the book using documentation like the account of Thomas Nickerson, who was just 14 when he boarded the ship as a cabin boy. Stranded in small whaleboats with limited resources, the crew first consumed the bodies of those who died naturally—and then, when they had been floating for more than two months, decided to cast lots to see who would die so the others might live. Sixteen-year-old Owen Coffin was shot and eaten. Ninety-three days after the sinking of the Essex, the last surviving crewmates were found emaciated and starving, sucking on the bones of their dead shipmates. The horrifying tale would become one of the inspirations for Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery // Ken McGoogan

Some of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s biggest expeditions were monumental failures. But it’s his 1845 expedition that had the most tragic end: After his two ships became stuck in the ice, Franklin himself perished—and eventually, so did every other member of the crew. Searching for Franklin is a fast-paced nonfiction read that captures not only the horrors of the failed expedition but also the unyielding efforts of Lady Franklin’s search for her missing husband, which included funding several recovery missions to the Arctic. When a search party brought back evidence provided by the Inuit that suggested the crew was driven to cannibalism to survive, Lady Franklin refused to believe the accusations, recruiting her friend Charles Dickens to write a takedown of the reports that unjustly accused the Inuit of murder.

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party // Daniel James Brown

The Indifferent Stars Above follows Sarah Graves and her new husband as they head west and eventually join the doomed Donner Party, which gets stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the winter of 1846, resulting in what would become one of the most famous—and most sensationalized—instances of cannibalism. Rather than further contribute to that dubious history, The Indifferent Stars Above takes a different approach to the tragedy, showing the humanity of people who were forced to make impossible decisions in order to survive. But Brown also doesn’t shy away from the group’s more egregious acts of violence, such as the murder of their two Indigenous guides so they could be eaten or the actions of Lewis Keseberg, who was accused of stealing from, killing, and eating his travel companions despite knowing help was on the way.

Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal // Harold Schechter

Man-Eater tells the story of Alfred G. Packer, the lone survivor of an 1873 trek through the Colorado Rockies gone horribly wrong. Packer told differing stories about what had happened in the wilderness, but claimed to have survived the winter on plant roots (something that seemed doubtful given his robust appearance). When the bodies of his fellow travelers were found with flesh missing, Packer confessed to cannibalism, claiming that as each member of the party died, the others consumed their remains. He was arrested, but escaped from jail and fled. Eventually, he was found and confessed again—telling a different story than he had previously—and was put on trial, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. That sentence was overturned, however, and after a second trial, Packer was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1886. In 1899, reporter Polly Pry began wrote stories about Packer—who she believed was innocent—and circulated petitions for his release on his behalf; finally, in 1901, Packer was granted parole by Colorado’s governor.  Though he was a free man, the weight of what happened in the Rockies hung around Packer’s neck for the rest of his life and gave him the nickname the “Colorado Cannibal.”

The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin // Douglas Smith

In the 1920s, the American Relief Organization began a mission to save Russia from one of the most devastating famines in Europe. But nothing could have prepared the group of Americans tasked with the job for the horrors they would witness: Cemeteries were raided so the corpses of the deceased could be eaten. Families ate their own blood relatives to survive. Women were arrested for possessing body parts. The Russian Job suggests the irony that this little-known relief mission likely saved Communism from collapse just decades before the Cold War.

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home // Nando Parrado and Vince Rause

Miracle in the Andes is the first-hand account of Nando Parrado, one of the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. In October 1972, a plane carrying teammates on the Old Christians Club rugby team and their families crashed into a mountain in the snow-filled Andes. When their meager food supplies ran out, they began to eat the flesh of the people who had died, and gave one another permission to use their bodies as food should they perish. Parrado writes that some of the survivors were devout Catholics who coped with what they had to do by “telling themselves that drawing life from the bodies of their dead friends was like drawing spiritual strength from the body of Christ when they took Communion.” Parrado and another survivor, Roberto Canessa, eventually walked over 33 miles through mountainous terrain to find rescue.

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