Stiff
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
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- 9,49 €
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- 9,49 €
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND THE PERFECT READ FOR FANS OF UNNATURAL CAUSES
What happens to your body after you have died?
Fertilizer? Crash Test Dummy? Human Dumpling? Ballistics Practise?
Life after death is not as simple as it looks. Mary Roach's Stiff lifts the lid off what happens to our bodies once we have died. Bold, original and with a delightful eye for detail, Roach tells us everything we wanted to know about this new frontier in medical science.
Interweaving present-day explorations with a history of past attempts to study what it means to be human Stiff is a deliciously dark investigations for readers of popular science as well as fans of the macabre.
'Spry, common, sharp-witted survey brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Life after death"' Sunday Times
'One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year' Entertainment Weekly
'Every chapter packed with more arresting details elegantly humourously expressed than one can hope for' Sunday Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called "Dead Man Driving") to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances. There are also chapters on cannibalism, including an aside on dumplings allegedly filled with human remains from a Chinese crematorium, methods of disposal (burial, cremation, composting) and "beating-heart" cadavers used in organ transplants. Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice as she describes such macabre situations as a plastic surgery seminar with doctors practicing face-lifts on decapitated human heads and her trip to China in search of the cannibalistic dumpling makers. Even Roach's digressions and footnotes are captivating, helping to make the book impossible to put down.
