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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Hardcover – Illustrated, April 17, 2003
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Mary Roach
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Mary Roach
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Editorial Reviews
From 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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Those curious or brave enough to find out what really happens to a body that is donated to the scientific community can do so with this book. Dissection in medical anatomy classes is about the least bizarre of the purposes that science has devised. Mostly dealing with such contemporary uses such as stand-ins for crash-test dummies, Roach also pulls together considerable historical and background information. Bodies are divided into types, including "beating-heart" cadavers for organ transplants, and individual parts-leg and foot segments, for example, are used to test footwear for the effects of exploding land mines. Just as the nonemotional, fact-by-fact descriptions may be getting to be a bit too much, Roach swings into macabre humor. In some cases, it is needed to restore perspective or aid in understanding both what the procedures are accomplishing and what it is hoped will be learned. In all cases, the comic relief welcomes readers back to the world of the living. For those who are interested in the fields of medicine or forensics and are aware of some of the procedures, this book makes excellent reading.
Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Not grisly but inspiring, this work considers the many valuable scientific uses of the body after death. Drawn from the author's popular Salon column.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The New England Journal of Medicine
Mary Roach certainly has an eye for the offbeat (and a stomach for the grisly). In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Roach, a columnist for Reader's Digest and the online news magazine Salon, surveys the uses to which corpses have been put over the centuries, along with some odd contemporary proposals. A selection of chapter titles and subtitles gives a flavor of the book's content and tone: "A Head Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Practicing Surgery on the Dead" (surgeons training on cadaveric heads), "Dead Man Driving: Human Crash Test Dummies and the Ghastly, Necessary Science of Impact Tolerance" (the use of human cadavers for crash-safety testing), "Out of the Fire, Into the Compost Bin: And Other New Ways to End Up" (a company that plans to use human remains for compost). Roach strives to be clear-eyed and matter-of-fact. "If you are inclined to donate yourself to science, you should not let images of dissection or dismemberment put you off," she says. "They are no more or less gruesome, in my opinion, than ordinary decay or the sewing shut of your jaws via your nostrils for a funeral viewing." The overall effect, though, is deflationary. There comes a point for all of us, Roach reminds us, when our bodies are no longer ourselves (the Boston Women's Health Collective notwithstanding). The well-being of the living depends in part on making use of bodies after death for physician training and the like. Roach's tongue-in-cheek approach to this material, however, makes it difficult to know why she has written the book and who her intended audience might be. This is not a scholarly treatment or the sort of book that one would take to the beach or display on a coffee table. Is she just out for laughs? Or does she have some more serious purpose in mind? Some of the material is informative, in a grim sort of way. For instance, the chapter called "Beyond the Black Box," about injury analysis, explains that studying the bodies of plane-crash victims may help determine the cause of the crash. Because the bodies of victims of the wreck of TWA Flight 800, which mysteriously blew apart in the air and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island in July 1996, were found to be largely intact, a bomb was thought to be highly unlikely. Other chapters, though, seem designed mainly to fill out the book or to play for cheap laughs. "Eat Me" focuses on what turned out to be a shaggy-dog story about cannibalism in a restaurant in Taiwan. It might have made more sense as a cautionary tale about why one should not necessarily believe what one reads on the Internet. In "Just a Head," about a series of weird attempts to transplant animal heads, Roach offers the following advice: "My recommendation to you is that you never eat baba ghanoush or, for that matter, any soft, glistening food item while carrying on a conversation involving monkey brains." You get the idea. It is not wrong to try to make a joke out of these matters. From Shakespeare to Philip Roth, comic artists have mined the graveyard for bitter laughs. Death is inconceivable; illness, among other things, often absurd. What physician has not felt an (embarrassed) need to guffaw about some dreadful event or condition? What these sorts of understandable responses call for, though, is an effort to get beyond dark comedy to some real emotional engagement. For instance, Sherwin Nuland's 1994 How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (New York: Knopf), although filled with graphic accounts of painful and undignified deaths, sought to advance a humanistic understanding about an experience that had been overly medicalized. Roach's style, by contrast, seems sensationalistic. She correctly notes, "pus and snot, slime and gleet. We are biology." But composting human remains? Perhaps that is briefly amusing, but isn't the idea also just slightly bizarre, if not repulsive? I'm afraid that the author needs to come up for air. For Roach, "dignity is all in the packaging." Why the deep cynicism? Considerate care of human remains is not just about "the application of a well-considered euphemism." Human lives have significance beyond the mere sum of their biologic parts. Roach touches on the cross-cultural taboos against mistreating a corpse primarily as an opportunity to exercise sarcasm. Roach does regard with approval the thoughtful awareness that medical students display while dissecting. "Medical schools have gone out of their way in the past decade to foster a respectful attitude toward gross anatomy lab cadavers," she writes. "With no prompting on my part, the students spoke of gratitude and preserving dignity, of having grown attached to their cadavers, of feeling bad about what they had to do to them. . . . No one made jokes the afternoon I was there, or anyway not at the corpse's expense." Surprisingly, given the author's determined efforts to appear cool and unsentimental, Roach's care for her dying mother appears to have at least partly motivated this project. "I find the dead easier to be around than the dying," she admits. "They are not in pain, not afraid of death. . . . The half hour I spent with my mother as a dead person was easier by far than the many hours I spent with her as a live person dying and in pain." What I suspect Roach is admiring in the medical students she observed is a sort of unsentimental reverence for the human body. The same sort of reverence, the sense that we owe one another a certain intrinsic respect, may have sustained the author through those troubling hours with her dying mother and may right now be helping those medical students in the difficult task of being present to the sick. Alan B. Astrow, M.D.
Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
From Booklist
Donating one's body to science sounds like an altruistic farewell for the betterment of humanity. Noble it may be, but most would prefer not to know what happens to a corpse in the name of research. Not our intrepid author. Some donors arrive at the expected places, such as anatomy classrooms, but would a person willingly assent to her postmortem decapitation so plastic surgeons could practice on her head unencumbered by the torso? Better not to wonder--yet Roach cheerily does as she attends to doings at medical schools, crash research labs, and mortuary schools. Her lab-coated guides seem delighted to see her come calling, which she reciprocates by praising the good that cadavers do (revealing the kinematics of car and plane crashes), along with (gulp) their appearance and olfactory condition. Roach writes in an insouciant style and displays her metier in tangents about bizarre incidents in pathological history. Death may have the last laugh, but, in the meantime, Roach finds merriment in the macabre. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Roach exhibits both a keen sense of humor and a sincere respect for the dearly departed."
― American Scientist
"A very funny book....full of surprises."
― Craig McLaughlin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"Roach saw some macabre things, but she describes them with respect and irresistible humor."
― Austin American-Statesman
"Roach displays her metier in tangents about bizarre incendents in pathological history."
― Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
"Surprisingly entertaining. Similar in tone to Bill Bryson's travel books, Roach manages to be humorous yet respectful."
― Rick Mathis, Chattanooga Times Free Press
"Every detail is fascinating."
― Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times
"Bring[s] alive a subject that has the potential to be deadly dull."
― Steve Fiffer, Chicago Tribune
"Her morbid subject―perverse, unsettling and voyeuristic―makes her book hard to put down."
― Dean Narcisco, Columbus Dispatch
"This bizarre tome will shock, disgust, intrigue and entertain you all at the same time."
― Mary Morrison, Coral Gables Gazette
"[Roach's] knack for detailed research and loose Dave Barry-ish style makes Stiff a leisurely and enjoyable read."
― Tom Westin, Daily Yomiuri
― American Scientist
"A very funny book....full of surprises."
― Craig McLaughlin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"Roach saw some macabre things, but she describes them with respect and irresistible humor."
― Austin American-Statesman
"Roach displays her metier in tangents about bizarre incendents in pathological history."
― Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
"Surprisingly entertaining. Similar in tone to Bill Bryson's travel books, Roach manages to be humorous yet respectful."
― Rick Mathis, Chattanooga Times Free Press
"Every detail is fascinating."
― Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times
"Bring[s] alive a subject that has the potential to be deadly dull."
― Steve Fiffer, Chicago Tribune
"Her morbid subject―perverse, unsettling and voyeuristic―makes her book hard to put down."
― Dean Narcisco, Columbus Dispatch
"This bizarre tome will shock, disgust, intrigue and entertain you all at the same time."
― Mary Morrison, Coral Gables Gazette
"[Roach's] knack for detailed research and loose Dave Barry-ish style makes Stiff a leisurely and enjoyable read."
― Tom Westin, Daily Yomiuri
About the Author
Mary Roach is the author of Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War,Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Her writing has appeared in Outside, Wired, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. She lives in Oakland, California.
Product details
- ASIN : 0393050939
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition (April 17, 2003)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 303 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780393050936
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393050936
- Lexile measure : 1230L
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#77,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #42 in Forensic Medicine (Books)
- #98 in Sociology of Death (Books)
- #128 in History of Medicine (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018
Verified Purchase
First of all the good, I like the history and all the research she did. I love hearing about the history of death and mourning, the history of medical research and organ donation. I don't mind the "gross" stuff about human bodies or the "irreverence", that's the point of this book to explore these topics that we shy away from as a society. In fact I find it slightly annoying that she constantly emphasizes how weird people probably think she is for asking certain questions or how much she seems to coddle the reader about some of the more explicit parts of death and cadavers. What I really find disturbing is the many times she talks about the horrible, painful, and mostly useless studies that we've done on LIVING animals. She talks about dead bodies with respect, but the casual horrific details about puppies having their heads sown onto other living dogs only to suffer and die over a matter of days... I just didn't expect that and it was fairly depressing. The experimentation on living animals seemed to be kind of a joke to her and it started to make me sick to my stomach and sort of ruined an otherwise fascinating book.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2019
Verified Purchase
I wanted to enjoy this book far more than I actually did. I was interested in the science behind and benefits of cadaver work and body donation. There was some of that in here and, regarding those parts, I found them to be interesting and informative. Roach does a great job of presenting that information in a way that is detailed and humorous, while also keeping the reader's attention. At times, the topic would deviate from human cadavers to experiments and work done on the bodies of animals--both alive and dead. The animals most frequently mentioned were dogs and cats. I'll take this opportunity to say that I'm not a person that is okay with animals being killed, tortured, or harmed in films or TV. I frequently refer to DoesTheDogDie before deciding to watch a movie or show and I know that I'm more sensitive to that type of content than others may be. I'm leaving this honest review from my own perception.
Having said that, I know and understand that human cadavers weren't easily accessible or culturally acceptable as forms of scientific research, so scientists and doctors used what they could get in those times. Mentioning that in passing would have been fine, but I really didn't need or want that same level of detail applied to the discussion of dogs and cats. I just skipped over those sections the first few times, but they just kept popping back up. As I got closer to the end of the book, there were entire chapters devoted to animal research with no mention of human cadavers. There was so much of it that I ended up feeling that the subtitle was misleading.
Having said that, I know and understand that human cadavers weren't easily accessible or culturally acceptable as forms of scientific research, so scientists and doctors used what they could get in those times. Mentioning that in passing would have been fine, but I really didn't need or want that same level of detail applied to the discussion of dogs and cats. I just skipped over those sections the first few times, but they just kept popping back up. As I got closer to the end of the book, there were entire chapters devoted to animal research with no mention of human cadavers. There was so much of it that I ended up feeling that the subtitle was misleading.
49 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book started off quite well, but once the descriptions of animal abuse started, I couldn't finish it. The depictions of horrific cruelty to animals are completely unnecessary.
50 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2019
Verified Purchase
I try to review every book I read, if only to have part of it fixated in my memory. The other part is writing practice. Reviewing to me is an exercise of concision and organization, helping bring order to my mind and rigor to my prose.
Then why leave Stiff alone for so many months? For it sat on my desk at the mercy of dust. Tell the truth, I even considered giving it no review at all. After going through Roach’s unfortunate bestseller, one thing is sure, I am not giving my body to science. Had such a tasteless assemblage not been given birth, I might have.
It is a sad decision when a major publishing company decides to go ahead with a project like this one. And indeed I was caught, like I will be in the future, I am sure, in this marketing manipulation. But what Mary Roach’s book ends up being is a collage of indecency.
Why such indignation and what is Stiff about? If you watch Law and Order, or read thrillers and mysteries, you will know what a stiff is. It is the name cops give to cadavers.
That’s what got me interested, the title. It implies what happens on the operating table of the medical examiner. As a mystery writer, I don’t know when the next stiff is going to pop up. And please, don’t think I am using the word in a cavalier way. Neither do the creators of the expression and the ones who shake hands with death every day---cops. Stiff seems just more familiar than cadaver.
But someone is cavalier with stiffs and that is Mary Roach. She is cavalier with death, with bodies, with their dismemberment, with cannibalism. The touch of humor she adds naming her little chapters adds cruelty and lack of sensitivity to a topic that needs to be dealt with sensitivity. She acts like that wounded teenager unable to express her hurt and sending sarcasms and witticisms instead.
But Roach is not a teenager. And she’s addressing a serious topic. The other side of life. The extension of life. Death is not the end of life. Even when it comes to the body. Think of it. Bury it. It becomes part of the earth. Other cells build and combine and enrich the soil. Death is just a name. Life, spiritual or material, never ends.
Roach’s book is a book of misery.
Instances. “A Head is a Terrible Thing to Waste” is the title where Roach (she’s missing a cock in her name; nothing to do with part of you, gentlemen) describes heads decapitated from cadavers carefully placed on trays by medical students. I am sure Danton and Robespierre, would have appreciated the photo that comes with this. (Good marketing for the guillotine.) And the rest of the body, you may ask? Either thrown out or sliced off. An arm is thrown time and again to test the impact of a fall, a leg sees how the breaks of that new car will work. Ping-pong time! See why I and other reviewers changed their minds about giving their body to science? See how irresponsible this is?
Indeed, a head is a terrible thing to waste. Where was yours, and incidentally, where is your heart, Madame Roach?
This is not the worst part. And please, stop eating your sandwich and grab a tea instead, with lemon preferably to settle your stomach, for what I am going to tell you next deals with cannibalism on live bodies. An ancient Chinese practice that extends actually to Mao’s time, it demands a daughter in law to cut a piece of her own flesh so that her new parents (hubby’s parents) can roast or fry her. Roach goes on over a page about this cuisine, and then moves into people fighting on aborted fetuses in a chapter titled Eat Me.
It’s not the writing about cannibalism that bothers me, or the one about science. I am quite sure that fascinating history and ethnology books must be begging under the dust of library shelves to be grabbed. No, it’s not that. It’s the buffet, the little buffet of death presented here to amuse the reader. Pick here, pick there, put a little of each on your plate. Well, I’ve got an indigestion and I may catch a worm.
I think of the cop who, every day, sees dead people. The accident, the murdered, or the little girl raped by her father and who becomes a stiff.
When I was a student at L’Ecole du Louvre, one of the first things I saw was when I entered the museum was the Egyptian section, a culture where soul and skin are inseparable.
When I returned from Spain one summer after learning to kiss, I saw my best friend, 16, dead. She was a gorgeous stiff, my lovely Christine.
As for Mary Roach’s Stiff, I shall extend its life too. When I am done writing this, I will place it in the recycling bin.
10.24.19
Then why leave Stiff alone for so many months? For it sat on my desk at the mercy of dust. Tell the truth, I even considered giving it no review at all. After going through Roach’s unfortunate bestseller, one thing is sure, I am not giving my body to science. Had such a tasteless assemblage not been given birth, I might have.
It is a sad decision when a major publishing company decides to go ahead with a project like this one. And indeed I was caught, like I will be in the future, I am sure, in this marketing manipulation. But what Mary Roach’s book ends up being is a collage of indecency.
Why such indignation and what is Stiff about? If you watch Law and Order, or read thrillers and mysteries, you will know what a stiff is. It is the name cops give to cadavers.
That’s what got me interested, the title. It implies what happens on the operating table of the medical examiner. As a mystery writer, I don’t know when the next stiff is going to pop up. And please, don’t think I am using the word in a cavalier way. Neither do the creators of the expression and the ones who shake hands with death every day---cops. Stiff seems just more familiar than cadaver.
But someone is cavalier with stiffs and that is Mary Roach. She is cavalier with death, with bodies, with their dismemberment, with cannibalism. The touch of humor she adds naming her little chapters adds cruelty and lack of sensitivity to a topic that needs to be dealt with sensitivity. She acts like that wounded teenager unable to express her hurt and sending sarcasms and witticisms instead.
But Roach is not a teenager. And she’s addressing a serious topic. The other side of life. The extension of life. Death is not the end of life. Even when it comes to the body. Think of it. Bury it. It becomes part of the earth. Other cells build and combine and enrich the soil. Death is just a name. Life, spiritual or material, never ends.
Roach’s book is a book of misery.
Instances. “A Head is a Terrible Thing to Waste” is the title where Roach (she’s missing a cock in her name; nothing to do with part of you, gentlemen) describes heads decapitated from cadavers carefully placed on trays by medical students. I am sure Danton and Robespierre, would have appreciated the photo that comes with this. (Good marketing for the guillotine.) And the rest of the body, you may ask? Either thrown out or sliced off. An arm is thrown time and again to test the impact of a fall, a leg sees how the breaks of that new car will work. Ping-pong time! See why I and other reviewers changed their minds about giving their body to science? See how irresponsible this is?
Indeed, a head is a terrible thing to waste. Where was yours, and incidentally, where is your heart, Madame Roach?
This is not the worst part. And please, stop eating your sandwich and grab a tea instead, with lemon preferably to settle your stomach, for what I am going to tell you next deals with cannibalism on live bodies. An ancient Chinese practice that extends actually to Mao’s time, it demands a daughter in law to cut a piece of her own flesh so that her new parents (hubby’s parents) can roast or fry her. Roach goes on over a page about this cuisine, and then moves into people fighting on aborted fetuses in a chapter titled Eat Me.
It’s not the writing about cannibalism that bothers me, or the one about science. I am quite sure that fascinating history and ethnology books must be begging under the dust of library shelves to be grabbed. No, it’s not that. It’s the buffet, the little buffet of death presented here to amuse the reader. Pick here, pick there, put a little of each on your plate. Well, I’ve got an indigestion and I may catch a worm.
I think of the cop who, every day, sees dead people. The accident, the murdered, or the little girl raped by her father and who becomes a stiff.
When I was a student at L’Ecole du Louvre, one of the first things I saw was when I entered the museum was the Egyptian section, a culture where soul and skin are inseparable.
When I returned from Spain one summer after learning to kiss, I saw my best friend, 16, dead. She was a gorgeous stiff, my lovely Christine.
As for Mary Roach’s Stiff, I shall extend its life too. When I am done writing this, I will place it in the recycling bin.
10.24.19
28 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

DaveTT
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought Provoking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2016Verified Purchase
Things I took away from this book:
(1) It's fascinating and often (more often than not in fact) quite funny, but it's also divisive, there'll be many readers who will have opposing views on the material it contains; no bad thing because it should open conversations and discussions about subjects that are little talked about.
(2) I want to leave my body to science if possible (and if required).
(3) I want as ecological an ending to my remains as possible if (2) isn't possible.
(4) Mary Roach must have had an absolute ball researching it, travelling to exotic (and not so exotic) places around the world and chatting with some wonderful characters from various fields of medical, scientific, military, and other careers related to the topic.
This brilliant book should be required reading on the curriculum at all high schools, colleges and universities to alleviate the discomfort many people have around discussing the end of life.
There should be TV documentary series made from it and educational DVDs released about it, it's that good, it dispels a lot of myths around many practices from the past and explains the laws and restraints that govern the use of the dead in modern times.
On top of all of that, it exposes the reader to cultural anomalies with regard to life and death, from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.
It isn't exhaustive but it is in depth, it's extremely well written and brings some levity to an otherwise 'grave' topic.
(1) It's fascinating and often (more often than not in fact) quite funny, but it's also divisive, there'll be many readers who will have opposing views on the material it contains; no bad thing because it should open conversations and discussions about subjects that are little talked about.
(2) I want to leave my body to science if possible (and if required).
(3) I want as ecological an ending to my remains as possible if (2) isn't possible.
(4) Mary Roach must have had an absolute ball researching it, travelling to exotic (and not so exotic) places around the world and chatting with some wonderful characters from various fields of medical, scientific, military, and other careers related to the topic.
This brilliant book should be required reading on the curriculum at all high schools, colleges and universities to alleviate the discomfort many people have around discussing the end of life.
There should be TV documentary series made from it and educational DVDs released about it, it's that good, it dispels a lot of myths around many practices from the past and explains the laws and restraints that govern the use of the dead in modern times.
On top of all of that, it exposes the reader to cultural anomalies with regard to life and death, from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.
It isn't exhaustive but it is in depth, it's extremely well written and brings some levity to an otherwise 'grave' topic.
28 people found this helpful
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Andrea Wilkie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very interesting, weird too in parts but good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2020Verified Purchase
This book certainly opened my eyes as to previous medical methods + research techniques on both humans and sadly animals alike. It's encouraging to suggest alternative methods of body disposable instead of traditional burial or cremation, especially if you can become fertiliser and assist in the growth of a plant or tree after death. In fact, I've love the idea because you're helping the planet after your demise, what a superb idea. The author is also very funny I found myself laughing out loud in numerous places throughout the book.
Continue reading after the reference pages at the rear of the book ! As there's more information. ( I nearly missed it)
Continue reading after the reference pages at the rear of the book ! As there's more information. ( I nearly missed it)
One person found this helpful
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Devere Wolfe
4.0 out of 5 stars
Never to late to learn
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2018Verified Purchase
This book would not be for everyone's taste. That said we all will pass. This book explains the processes that happen when that happens. Morbid, is not a word I would use to describe the tune of this rather I would use informative. Certainly I would suggest it would help anyone that is naturally worries about the process in passing. For that reason I recommend this book.
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Jessica Ellis
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating!!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2017Verified Purchase
This is one of the first non fiction books I have read outside of University studies (I study history so this might be a surprising choice of book) but I have to say I was enthralled throughout. While possibly a little out of date now (I am reading this in 2017), this book made me really consider my own approach to death. Incredibly, considering the subject matter, I laughed many times at the wit of the author, and repeatedly exclaimed in astonishment at some of the things I learned. I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who has the slightest interest in the macabre.
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Metropolitan Critic
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Roach Approach
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2012Verified Purchase
Mary Roach's theme is the use of corpses in scientific research. Their best known use is in medicine, where they are employed both as a teaching aid for students and a source of organs for the living. But they are also used by car engineers in crash tests, by the military to study the effects of weapons (and protective equipment), and by forensic experts investigating crimes and disasters.
Roach's style is not to provide to an academic, library based, review of previous literature. Her style is to go see. The book opens with the author attending a demonstration in which cosmetic surgeons are practising nose jobs on 40 severed heads. Later she jets off to China in a (futile) attempt to verify a story about alleged malpractice in a crematorium, and to Sweden to meet a woman promoting ecological funerals. It's a book with a large carbon footprint.
Her technique is to use jolly, frat boy language to present macabre material (Larf n' Barf, as it's been called). It's not to everyone's taste, although personally I like her sense of humour. The scene in which she asks a stony faced director of a Chinese crematorium whether one of her employees used the buttocks of cadavers to make dumplings is a virtuosic comic performance.
The one area in which I feel she strikes a false note is in relation to experiments on live animals. While I don't see any objection to using dead humans for scientific purposes, using live animals is a different matter. When Roach describes (with evident comic intent) some of the hideous experiments that have been carried out on animals, I felt that she had passed beyond an absence of squeamishness into simple callousness.
But I enjoyed Roach's account of the euphemisms of death. Employees of mortuaries are told to call a dead body a 'decedent', not a stiff, corpse or cadaver. A project using corpses to assess what type of shoes soldiers should wear to avoid getting their feet blown off by landmines was dubbed the 'lower extremity assessment programme'.
Of course, a corpse by any other name would smell as revolting. But some of the linguistic questions she discusses are more than merely verbal. In particular, how should one define death? As Roach points out, when organ donation became a medical possibility (in the 1960s and 70s) it was neccessary to redefine death as 'brain death'. (In effect, organ donation requires a situation in which a person's brain is dead but their organs are still alive.) Otherwise, surgeons removing the living organs from brain dead patients would have been vulnerable to charges of assault or murder.
Also thought provoking was her discussion of the ethical problem raised by the concept of 'informed consent' in giving the body of a family member to science. On the one hand, the idea of 'informed' consent seems to imply that the relatives should be told exactly what will happen to the cadaver. However, this may be needlessly distressing (the relatives might approve of the cadaver being used, but not wish to know the detail).
The final question she raises is the extent to which it is reasonable to seek to control what should happen to one's own body after death, one's funeral arrangements and so on. And how far should the wishes of the dead be respected? Elaborate stipulations as to what should happen after one's death might simply add to the burden imposed on others.
I listened to the recording of Stiff made by Shelly Frasier for Tantor Media in 2003. Frasier reads the book well, but I have two complaints:
(a) she misses out the footnotes (and some of Roach's best jokes are in the footnotes!);
(b) I wish Roach herself had read the book (she has a pleasant voice, and it's always good to hear the author).
Roach's style is not to provide to an academic, library based, review of previous literature. Her style is to go see. The book opens with the author attending a demonstration in which cosmetic surgeons are practising nose jobs on 40 severed heads. Later she jets off to China in a (futile) attempt to verify a story about alleged malpractice in a crematorium, and to Sweden to meet a woman promoting ecological funerals. It's a book with a large carbon footprint.
Her technique is to use jolly, frat boy language to present macabre material (Larf n' Barf, as it's been called). It's not to everyone's taste, although personally I like her sense of humour. The scene in which she asks a stony faced director of a Chinese crematorium whether one of her employees used the buttocks of cadavers to make dumplings is a virtuosic comic performance.
The one area in which I feel she strikes a false note is in relation to experiments on live animals. While I don't see any objection to using dead humans for scientific purposes, using live animals is a different matter. When Roach describes (with evident comic intent) some of the hideous experiments that have been carried out on animals, I felt that she had passed beyond an absence of squeamishness into simple callousness.
But I enjoyed Roach's account of the euphemisms of death. Employees of mortuaries are told to call a dead body a 'decedent', not a stiff, corpse or cadaver. A project using corpses to assess what type of shoes soldiers should wear to avoid getting their feet blown off by landmines was dubbed the 'lower extremity assessment programme'.
Of course, a corpse by any other name would smell as revolting. But some of the linguistic questions she discusses are more than merely verbal. In particular, how should one define death? As Roach points out, when organ donation became a medical possibility (in the 1960s and 70s) it was neccessary to redefine death as 'brain death'. (In effect, organ donation requires a situation in which a person's brain is dead but their organs are still alive.) Otherwise, surgeons removing the living organs from brain dead patients would have been vulnerable to charges of assault or murder.
Also thought provoking was her discussion of the ethical problem raised by the concept of 'informed consent' in giving the body of a family member to science. On the one hand, the idea of 'informed' consent seems to imply that the relatives should be told exactly what will happen to the cadaver. However, this may be needlessly distressing (the relatives might approve of the cadaver being used, but not wish to know the detail).
The final question she raises is the extent to which it is reasonable to seek to control what should happen to one's own body after death, one's funeral arrangements and so on. And how far should the wishes of the dead be respected? Elaborate stipulations as to what should happen after one's death might simply add to the burden imposed on others.
I listened to the recording of Stiff made by Shelly Frasier for Tantor Media in 2003. Frasier reads the book well, but I have two complaints:
(a) she misses out the footnotes (and some of Roach's best jokes are in the footnotes!);
(b) I wish Roach herself had read the book (she has a pleasant voice, and it's always good to hear the author).
3 people found this helpful
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