Marsena's review
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
Marsena's review
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Marsena's review
rating:
bookshelves:
absolutely_fabulous
I absolutely could not put this book down. A hilarious yet somehow respectful exploration of what happens to our bodies once we're dead. Roach takes her inquisitive mind to places it wouldn't occur to me to go, way past normal burial and cremation to medical school anatomy labs, human crash test dummies, cannibalism, and the decapitated heads that plastic surgeons use for practice...and she makes me laugh every step of the way.
In the chapter, "How To Know if You're Dead:" Roach's exploration of the history of mankind's attempts to define where the soul actually exists takes her to an OR where surgeons are harvesting organs from a brain dead patient. "Utah [the surgeon who flew in from Utah to get the heart] is a gentle-looking man of perhaps fifty, with graying hair and a thin, tanned face. He has finished changing and a nurse is snapping on his gloves. He looks calm, competent, even a little bored. (This just slays me. The man is about to cut a beating heart out of...more
In the chapter, "How To Know if You're Dead:" Roach's exploration of the history of mankind's attempts to define where the soul actually exists takes her to an OR where surgeons are harvesting organs from a brain dead patient. "Utah [the surgeon who flew in from Utah to get the heart] is a gentle-looking man of perhaps fifty, with graying hair and a thin, tanned face. He has finished changing and a nurse is snapping on his gloves. He looks calm, competent, even a little bored. (This just slays me. The man is about to cut a beating heart out of...more
