Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Rating:
Summary: This book killed me!
Review: It has been years since I enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed "Stiff". Well-researched and written with uproarious flare, the book deftly walks the delicate line between informative and enjoyable. I knew nothing of Roach before I picked up the book, merely because of the intriguing cover and my utter ignorance on the topic of death. But I'm so glad I read it. Great, great work of nonfiction.

Rating:
Summary: Dead On Interesting
Review: The night before I started STIFF I was at a Philosophy class where the instructor said something like, "One of the strange things about humans is that they are the only animal that knows that all living things die, yet they think that they themselves never will."

The next day I started Stiff and began to learn what happens to your corpse after you stop using it. This is a science book that happens to be entertaining, not an entertainment fiction book that has some science in it. Still, it is very entertaining. There is no (or very little) gratuitous gore, but there is gore by the boatload. If you are easily queased, (or should that be very queasy?) this book will be hard to get through in spots in spite of the matter of fact tone and very humorous style. If you have a reasonably strong stomach this is (mostly) no problem. I had to put away the guacamole and chips when I read one of the earlier chapters on cadaver decomposition research for a University forensic anthropology department. But, by the time I got to later chapters on bullets, bombs and their impact on flesh I was able to read while nibbling on leftover ribs from yesterday's barbeque.

Why do you need to use real live cadavers for experiments when a substitute will do? Why not a pig or a chimp or a crash-test dummy? This question is addressed early and easily. The dead are very useful in telling us what limits the living can tolerate. Before you can strap a dummy into a car crash to measure impact, you need to use a cadaver to learn how much impact is ok. Thank someone's dead Grandparent for windshield safety glass, air bags, seat belts and a thousand other innovations that keep our soft pink fleshy parts breathing and alive after a 60 mile an hour wall impact.

I gained a lot of respect for the donated dead as "heroes", directly, for donating their organs and body parts so that a living person can go on doing that, or indirectly, from research so that researchers can learn, for example, which are the most effective shoes to wear for land mine removal. The researchers also come off as courageous for asking their questions and using the appropriate yet taboo material to get at the answer.

The writing style is easy, clever, educational and funny. In a chapter devoted to the history of searching for the location of the soul within the body comes this description of the liver:
"The human liver is a boss-looking organ. It's glossy, aerodynamic, Olympian. It looks like sculpture, not guts.... The liver gleams. It looks engineered and carefully wrought. Its flanks have a subtle curve..."

A couple of shortcomings though; one, I wish she had taken her story a little further and revealed the results of some of the testing using cadavers. For instance, what IS the preferred footwear when clearing minefields? The second issue I have is that my conversations were tainted for a couple of weeks after reading the book. As interesting as the topic is, no one really wants to hear about testing fragmentation bullets on cadavers at a barbecue.

Would I will my body to medical research now that I've read STIFF? I do have an organ donor card and I used to assume that once I'm dead, I'm dead, so take my organs and transplant them and save lives! Now, however, I don't think I want my severed head, no neck, sitting in a disposable turkey-roasting pan being used for plastic surgeons to practice face-lifts. I mean, come on, a dead guys got to have limits!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely,Insanely Fantastic
Review: I Saw this book on the shelf and the minute I read the first few sentences I was hooked. I read it at work,on the train and at home. This book was so good. Mary Roach is amazing. She is respectful and yet she adds sarcasm and such great humor on a subject matter that many people avoid. I am an avid reader on
forensic science and true crime. But, Ms.Roach opened up a whole new world to me with this book. As a reader you will discover things that will amaze and suprise you. Stiff gives the reader an insider look to what scientists and doctors do in order to try and improve the lives of the living. These people are the brave and silent ones who do what many cannot.This book is definitely a must read for not just the summer but for the year and the year after that.

Rating:
Summary: Not all Blood and Gore, but Awesome Book.
Review: I wasn't sure what to expect with a book titled "Stiff," but I was surprised at the vast knowledge I acquired by reading it. I enjoyed the humorous point of view and amusing historical uses of Cadavers. I recommend this book highly, especially if interested in Forensics. I have gained a new respect for the dead and those who come into contact with them.

Rating:
Summary: Busy Bodies
Review: Everyone knows that automobile testing requires crash test dummies, who obligingly ride in cars that slam or are slammed by others, and provide read-out and films to show what happens in crashes that would otherwise be horrific. But how do we know that the mannequins are really measuring what real bodies do in a crash? A crash test dummy which didn't register the break of a knee or of a cranium in the circumstances that would break an actual knee or cranium would be of little use, but researchers cannot ask a real human to do the tests. Except that they can; for unequalled simulation of reality, use a real human, but for the sake of humanity, use a cadaver. It is one of the perfectly sensible things that dead people can do to help those of us who are not yet dead. As such, it forms one of the chapters in a remarkable book, _Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers_ (W. W. Norton) by Mary Roach. The subject may be taboo, but as Roach says, "Death. It doesn't have to be boring." This funny book crammed with extraordinarily weird information will delight unsqueamish readers.

The crash experiments she reports on were conducted at the Bioengineering Center at Wayne State University, where cadaver UM 006 is wired up and propped up to go through a simulated side impact. Roach takes us to a plastic surgery training session in which forty human heads are placed in forty roasting pans ("to catch the drippings") so that plastic surgeons at the University of California can learn the skills associated with doing away with wrinkles. Such cadavers are treated with respect (and those who donate them ought to get our thanks), but here also are stories of cannibalism and human parts used for medicine. Roach reminds us several times that she is not herself a squeamish person, though this will be obvious to anyone who reads this odd book. She tells us of the ways that bodies, rather than flight data recorders, can tell what happened to a plane breaking up in flight. We learn of the tests of munitions on cadavers, shooting them to document bullet effects. Donated legs are used to test the best shoes to protect legs from mine injuries, and are quite a bit cheaper than the "Frangible Surrogate Leg" for use where testing of ballistics on cadavers is not allowed. There have been crucifixion experiments to see what really happens to a crucified body and what sort of weight nailed hands versus wrists could hold up. (Live people intrude here; strapping, rather than nailing, living people to a cross shows that they don't have particular trouble breathing, as had been previously reported.) She goes to an outdoor lab where bodies are just left out in the open so that crime pathologists can learn to calibrate their descriptions of the timing of decay. She watches the instruction at a mortuary science school. She interviews the pioneers who are hoping to have composting of humans as an accepted practice. Roach visits the operating room where organs are taken from a brain dead woman for transplantation. To read this amusing and at times shocking book is to understand that people with personalities are important, and that cadavers are less so, but what we do with them tells us a lot about the living they have left behind.

Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: Stiff is one unique book. If you are interested in the morbid this is the book for you. The author does a good job of making you laugh at a very unlaughable situation. For example I was rolling when she sat in on the human cadavar head face lifts. I won't say anymore ......I don't want to spoil the fun.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: As a mortuary student, I found this book to be a smooth read, with great information contained within its pages. It may humor you a little, it may shock you, but this book was a much needed break from the monotony of my textbooks at school. I haven't read a book for pleasure in YEARS! I'm glad I started again with this one.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating stiff -er - stuff! I mean fascinating stuff!
Review: Just the kind of style of writing I like. Informative but drily witty as well.
Kept my interest throughout, without exception.

I highly recommend it unless you are sensitive, or have lost someone recently.

I would give it 5/5, but for:
a) the one too many witty one-liners at the end of paragraphs which, if you're in a bad mood, can remind you of the recent overkill of chick-lit...;

b) towards the latter part of the book there were a few too many comments of the "I tried to contact this person/institute but they were busy and/or didn't get back to me..."

That is refreshingly honest of the author, and pre-empts any criticism, but...up against a deadlline, were we? Too bad, because telling us the book could have been better is frustrating.

Those are my only criticisms. I only found one typo!

Rating:
Summary: death becomes us
Review: Mary Roach certainly respects the dead, that much is clear from this strangely fun book. It is clear that she is a columnist, for this book is much more informally written than I would expect from the topic and all the reviews. I was expecting something more scientific, but I was not disappointed. She certainly did her research, having travelled across the world to learn more about how human beings treat the dead. ThI think te informality serves to keep the interest of people who normally would not be too interested in the topic. She treats the subject in a very sensitive way. She understands people's fears and revulsions and she addresses them directly. She is not a scientist, who deals with statistics- she is a regular old person, just like the rest of us, trying to understand the role of the human body after we die, and that is how she tells the story.

With all the interest in forensics and crime scene investigation these days, it is refreshing to see the body as a focal point of discussion. This book will also hopefully promote education of medical and scientific research.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, Funny book
Review: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is defintely one of the most unique books I have read in a long time but also one of the best. It's strange to laugh out loud at death and corpses but this book makes you do that. Roach, however, is entirely respectful of her subjects but presents her subject matter in a witty and entertaining way. Great book.