Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Stiff has created a new definition to death and its 'after life'.



Rating: Four Stars ****

Genre: Popular Non-Fiction - Science

Summary: Stiff is a collection of essays about how human cadavers are used in science. Some topics covered involve the army and the impact of bullets on human cadavers, how our bodies decompose (i.e. gases need to escape so our tongues and mouths, as well as genitalia become 'edowed'), cannibalism is China (up to the Ming dynasty, it was a practices that kids, more so daughter take a part of themselves and make a dish for their ailing mother in laws - boiled breast, seared thigh, etc), organ transplants, beheadings, as well as features environmental alternatives for the dead AKA human compost. Main message: DONATE YOUR ORGANS TO MEDICINE/ Bodies to Science.

Evaluation: I once had a customer that bought a hard cover of this book said it was really good, but borderline awful. I found it to be the prefect way to describe Mary Roach's incorporation of tangents and tacky jokes in the profusion of great writing. She is thorough enough to keep it interesting, even though the book has parts that are somewhat dated.

Read-a-likes: Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death by Jessica Snyder Sachs
Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Dr. Christine Montross
Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese