Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Rating:
Summary: wonderfully informative book
Review: This is an extremely interesting book in and of itself, but the author's prose adds to it even more. Written in language simple enough for someone without a science background yet detailed enough to interest someone with healthcare experience , the author's interjections are extremely welcome. Her opinions are inserted only when appropriate, and for the most part she serves primarily as a storyteller. Think of it as though she were telling the story and throwing in her comments when they were too strong to subdue. She also gives wonderful insights into the minds of the men and women who carry out this reasearch, asking each the questions that the reader themself wants to know. A good deal of time is spent on the mindset of the researchers, but the overall theme is that of how cadavers have been used to further human knowledge, and to generally make the lives of the living safer.

Rating:
Summary: "Stiff" is practically brilliant.
Review: I haven't enjoyed a non-fiction book as much as this one. Ever. It was informative and entertaining (yes, I mean humorous). All this while treating a usually-taboo topic with respect. I think everyone who intends to part this Earth some day should read "Stiff" first.

Rating:
Summary: Very detailed!
Review: I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has a fascination with dead people. It was almost refreshing to know that I'm not a freak. I just think that a dead body, the way it looks, and what happens to it is so fascinating. This book even includes the history of what has happened to dead bodies over the years which at times made my tummy a little squimmish. Just loved, loved, loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: Dead Funny
Review: I loved the book. Mary manages to impart a lot of scientific knowledge while never quite losing her "holy [cow], I'm sitting here with a dead guy" attitude. She's very very funny, but never disrespectful. So many of the situations she finds herself in while researching the book are just inherently strange and therefore ready to be mined for black black humour.

She explains in the introduction that "this is a book about notable achievements made while dead." Here is an excerpt that highlights a not-so-notable achievement, but which made me laugh. Roach is talking about gas, and how it's caused by bacteria in our gut feeding on what we've eaten. After death, the bacteria begins to feed on us:

"The difference is that when we're alive, we expel that gas. The dead, lacking workable stomach muscles and sphincters and bedmates to annoy, do not. Cannot. So the gas builds up and the belly bloats. I ask Arpad why the gas wouldn't just get forced out eventually. He explains that the small intestine has pretty much collapsed and sealed itself off. Or that there might be "something" blocking its egress. Though he allows, with some prodding, that a little bad air often does, in fact, slip out, and so, as a matter of record, it can be said that dead people fart. It needn't be, but it can."

As you can see, this is a great book. And even though fans of Six Feet Under might know a few of these things, there's much more for them (us!) in here. The history of embalming, dissection, grave-robbing, human crash-test dummies; it's all here.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is not really about scatalogical humour, despite my choice of excerpt. It's a funny and insightful book born out of the morbid curiosity about death that all of us share.

Rating:
Summary: the humor in being human
Review: I wish I had sat next to Mary Roach in high school. Her true/funny asides would have helped in many a boring class. I saw her read from her book and found that she spoke like she writes -- more along the lines of "isn't it funny being human?" than a real gross-out.

Stiff is painstakingly researched good writing, reminding me of the late Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On, Conduct Unbecoming). Ms. Roach asks the questions we want answers to -- including often asking researchers whether their work bothers them and why/how they got involved in their work. Roach even asks a cardiac transplant surgeon whether his patients want to preserve their old hearts as a souvenir (they don't). She points out where our squeamishness with death keeps us from saving lives -- most obviously, in organ donation. Her book also shows a genuine warmth to people who agreed to leave their bodies to help others, as in this ending to a chapter about a brain-dead organ donor:

"...with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, ...more than half of the people in the position that H's family was in ... will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. ... H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you'd call her."

It's fitting that the last chapter is about a Swedish businesswoman working on technology to compost human remains quickly whose philosophy is that we came from the earth and owe it to the earth to return to it as usefully as possible. (Her process makes more nutrients available in the soil than cremation.)

I actually felt comforted and somewhat uplifted by this book because of Roach's relentless matter-of-factness and respect for the cadavers and those who work on them. As it is when a doctor describes an upcoming surgery to you, it's a relief to know what's coming.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, Educational and Thought-Provoking
Review: Films like "The Trouble With Harry" and "Weekend at Bernie's" have proven that cadavers can be an entertaining subject for the screen. Now, with "Stiff," Mary Roach has accomplished the same thing in print.

From some of the excerpts I'd seen of this book, I almost expected a "Mad" magazine-style approach to the subject. Roach is just as funny, but the humor is accomplishing more sophisticated purposes. Anything we can laugh at obviously can't be too frightening, right? Roach manages to defuse the emotional tension that could build up around this subject, and thus make the tales she has to share easier to face. She manages to be quite amusing, but never at the expense of her inanimate subjects.

From anatomy labs to mortuary schools to a Chineese village where human remains were allegedly used to make dumplings, Roach literally takes us around the world as she searches out the heroic, strange and sometimes follish things we do with the mortal remains of others. I was entertained by this book, I learned more than a few things, and I found myself questioning with renewed vigor some of the fears, values and rituals we associate with death.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Title!
Review: The title tells it all........you will be bored STIFF! Not very entertaining and little information that you haven't already seen on the History Channel. I had looked forward to this book and was disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Very funny as well as informative.
Review: After reading a review of the book in People, I thought, "This book should be right up my alley!" If you skip the contents and just read, you will probably find, as I did, that every chapter contains another topic you may have been curious about but have never researched. A little morbid surprise in each chapter! ;) I will still fly in an airplane even after reading the investigation into a crash. (You know you've wondered about such things too!) Death doesn't seem as scary anymore.... :)

Rating:
Summary: Reminded me of Patricia Cornwell books
Review: A lot of the information in this book has been covered in a fictional setting by Patricia Cornwell in her mystery books
whose main character is a female medical examiner. There was a lot of information in this book. Perhaps too much. Lots of footnotes. The author certainly seemed to enjoy the subject matter and research. On occasion the text would drag, then pick back up. Ms. Roach is also a travel columnist, and I found her retelling of research and interaction with the locals in China and Sweden to be very entertaining and interesting. I suspect she's written very entertaining travel columns. A good book, a little long, hit and miss on the humor, I give it 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: You'll die laughing!
Review: This is, undeniably, one of the funniest, most fascinating books I've ever read. I always admired Mary Roach's wicked Salon columns, but this has to be the pinnacle of wicked humor. A great, devilish read!