Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Cannonball Read - Book 70

Short back-of-the-book description for Stiff:

"Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers - some willingly, some unwittingly - have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them."

This. Book. Was. AWESOME. Seriously bad-ass. Funny and gross and totally respectful of the dead - although at times, not so much of the living. But that's what makes it even more awesome. You can't really help what happens to you once you die - but you can control what you do to dead people. Does that make sense? I mean, science has benefited greatly from cadavers, but did you have to go and grave-rob, people of the 18th- and 19th-centuries?

I could probably write a better review, but who needs to read that? Just read the book! Probably one of my top ten favorite non-fiction books of all time, and certainly one of the best this year.

Stiff - A

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