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A review by scytmo
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
4.0
A fascinating, if slightly outdated, exploration of all the things that can happen to human cadavers: from anatomy classes for students studying medicine, to investigating the efficacy of vehicle safety systems, to the various ways people ingest human remains, to their ultimate disposal.
“Mary Roach is an American author specialising in popular science and humour”, according to her Wikipedia page, and that’s exactly what you get here - a well researched look at what could potentially be quite a dark subject, but treated with just the right amount of humour and occasional well-pitched irreverence.
There’s some fascinating insight here into both current and historical uses of cadavers. It’s only a shame that the book is slightly dated now, having been originally published in 2003, so some of the descriptions of “upcoming” advances in areas covered by the book are now over 20 years out of date (although I’d be very interested to know how things have progressed).
“Mary Roach is an American author specialising in popular science and humour”, according to her Wikipedia page, and that’s exactly what you get here - a well researched look at what could potentially be quite a dark subject, but treated with just the right amount of humour and occasional well-pitched irreverence.
There’s some fascinating insight here into both current and historical uses of cadavers. It’s only a shame that the book is slightly dated now, having been originally published in 2003, so some of the descriptions of “upcoming” advances in areas covered by the book are now over 20 years out of date (although I’d be very interested to know how things have progressed).