Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.12 You Save: $7.83 (56%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.48 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Book Review: Nervous Humor
Summary: 5 Stars
Fans of the HBO series "Six Feet Under" will recall that Lisa's niece Michaela kept trying to give this book to David, the funeral director. I had been vaguely aware of this book when it came out 2 years ago but my interest was rekindled when the 4th season of 6FU was released on DVD this summer.
The connection with 6FU is apropos. Both share a morbid fascination with and a nervous humor about death, and both are wildly entertaining because they skirt the bounds of propriety.
One more television comparison: on the Discovery Channel series "Mythbusters" they use a crash test dummy, nicknamed "Buster," for many of their human endurance tests. Other tests involve firing bullets, hard drive fragments or CD-ROM fragments into fake human torsos constructed of ballistic gelatin. So I had some familiarity with "cadaver stand-ins" in the testing of human limits.
But Mary Roach isn't interested in stand-ins. She goes straight for the real thing, the rogue scientists who use real dead people for experiments. It's a subject rarely spoken about, barely acknowledged by the body donation establishment. Not all cadavers end up in dissection labs for budding surgeons.
Roach's tone in the book, as other reviewers have noted, is irreverent without being disrespectful. The cavalier attitudes sometimes adopted by trauma nurses in order to deal with stress seem somehow inappropriate when dealing with the already-dead. Nothing can hurt a corpse further -- and yet there's a cultural, or perhaps evolutionary reluctance to desecrate the newly departed. The irony is not lost on Roach.
This is a fast and fascinating read, reminiscent perhaps of Perri Klass's work or her fellow Discover Magazine medical columnist, Jeffrey Kluger. Roach imparts quite a bit of science and research arcana by keeping it light and chatty, and I did not find her humor annoying or out of place. In fact, it's the perfect lubricant for making a difficult subject morbidly entertaining.
Book Review: What Really happens when you donate your body...you'll be Surprised!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book, though dealing with death, is an extremely thorough and very interesting read. Roach reveals the truth in this book of what Really happens when we opt to donate our bodies after death. As most people I assumed that my organs would be donated and possibly sent to a med school for medical students...in some cases that is true. But in most cases that is far from the truth. Some of it may sound gruesome but the intentions, in most cases, are good.
In many cases the corpse is cut into pieces, from head to limbs and sent all over the country for study purposes and not so much for donations. We've all seen those 'crash test dummies' the U.S. auto manufacturers use but did you know that they all use dead bodies for their testing...it is the only way to get the true results of different crash results of what happnes to a body whether the car is hit head on or by the side, etc. This is used in the study of bones broken, organs damaged etc., nothing that a dummie could give the true results of. Also put on body farms to study all kinds of ways a body decomposes to help in murder investigations determine factors in murder cases. The most disturbing thing I found is that Heads, just the head of a corpse may be sent to med students studying how to give face lifts, etc. The information I've given you is not a spoiler to this book but just a beggining to let you know what really happends to a donated body.
Roach is very thorough in her writings and writes well. To me this wasn't written to frighten or scare you but more to tell you of the true and bizarre events that occur to the donated corpses. The majority are for very good reasons. Somehow Roach is able to write this book and actually make it enjoyable with the subject matter. If you are a forensics buff this is the book for you!
Book Review: Stiff: A Must Read
Summary: 5 Stars
While some people may be put off by a book containing the contradicting words "lives" and "cadavers" in the subtitle, readers of this indeed intriguing novel will be pleasantly surprised. Stiff by Mary Roach is an educational, yet humorous book about the things you never wanted to know about life, well, what could happen, after death. Roach covers numerous topics ranging from cadavers being used as crash test dummies to crucifixion experiments.
Each chapter has a new and exciting topic involving dead human bodies. Roach mixes each chapter with a personal encounter of the process being completed on the cadaver and some history that gets filled into the pages that relates to the topic. While two chapters, "Just a Head" and "Eat Me" become a little too history heavy for my liking, mostly all of the captivating sections of the novel are well balanced between the present and the past. From explaining the dead bodies composing under a tree, to surgeons practicing nose surgery on a potential relative you may have never laughed so hard or opened you eyes so wide. New territory is covered, and you won't know what to do with all the fascinating, odd facts you learned about the lives of these curious cadavers.
Roach has impeccable writing techniques that will leave you reading until the last page. Roach uses just enough details as to not overwhelm, but simply inform to and satisfied capacity. She wasn't afraid to offend, and told the bold truth in each chapter. This book is oddly addicting, and you will never think about dead bodies the same. I would recommend this book to anyone, any age. It's too well written and explained too perfectly to pass up. Stiff is absolutely fascinating; a thought provoking and riveting book that balances sensitivity and respect.
Book Review: Death. It doesn't have to be boring.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Being dead is unsightly, stinky, and embarrassing", states author Mary Roach, but she also shows us just how interesting it can be in this amazingly well written book. Her prose is precise, conversational, and even entertaining at times without being disrespectful to her "subjects".
From forensic body farms to car crash impact studies, from practicing surgical procedures to testing ballistics, and on to research into such off-the-wall subjects as ancient uses for poo and body composting, 'Stiff' will inform and sometimes amuse your morbid curiosity over the intriguing questions regarding our bodies after we die.
Needless to say, you'll need a strong stomach and an open mind to read Roach's accounts of anatomy lab sawings, disembodied heads, "beating heart cadavers", medicinal cannibalism, "impact tolerance", human crash-test dummies, forensic decay studies, the earlier and grislier practices of autopsy, and how all these seemingly ghastly and macabre practices have brought science to the level we enjoy today.
She addresses the impact of research on modern science, the origin of criteria for brain death, how organ donation occurs and how it saves lives, how cadavers have aided forensics and the ability to research cause-of-accident such as the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 beyond the black-box, even such outrageous questions as "what does the soul weigh?"
The book includes acknowledgements, a very extensive bibliography, and a blurb on how to donate your own body to science. Though 'Stiff' is non-fiction, I highly recommend it for fans of horror. There's enough info inside this gooey treat to make you burp up your coffee-and-cheesecake more than once. Fortunately, there are no pictures. Enjoy!
Book Review: Dead-on discussion on the usefulness of the dead
Summary: 5 Stars
With bright humor, wicked insights and a strong stomach, appropriately-named author Mary Roach pierces the veil that separates -- if not death from life -- then the dead from the living. Ever wonder how crash test dummies so closely mimic the human body's frailties? Ponder on how plastic surgeons practice the craft of sticking knives into people's faces? Curious about how analysts can tell whether a plane crash victims were killed by explosions or by impact with water (hint: it all about broken ribs skewering lungs)? Perplexed about whether footwear worn by mine clearers will protect their feet? Wonder no more! Roach explains how human beings -- at least their corporeal remains -- find usefulness even when their current occupants no longer do. Her travels to her to embalming rooms, anatomy classes and open fields where cadavers are set up to study decay rates. While she does not meet with any truly ghoulish characters, the activities of the people she does interview engage in activities that are as gruesome, distasteful and repugnant as they are necessary and even potentially lifesaving. She deals with the ethics of damaging dead bodies in the name of science and safety, and whether relatives have a right to decide whether Granddad will get slammed into a wall to test a new airbag design. Roach also deals with how medical people and others try to depersonalize their test subjects -- who so easily "read" as people -- not test dummies. There's enough talk of beheading, putrefaction, maggots and cadaver bashing to make the squeamish think twice. But Roach, gauging her text by her own limit of repulsion, draws the veil shy of the disgusting to reveal a world in which the recently dead still have a chance to serve the living.