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Mary Roach

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Paperback – May 17, 2004

by Mary Roach (Author)

3,751 ratings

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"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."―Entertainment Weekly

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.

Print length

303 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

May 17, 2004
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

0393324826
ISBN-13

978-0393324822
Lexile measure

1230L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This quirky, funny read offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical profession.... You can close this book with an appreciation of the miracle that the human body really is."
― Tara Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal

"A laugh-out-loud funny book... one of those wonderful books that offers up enlightenment in the guise of entertainment."
― Michael Little, Washington City Paper

"As weird as the book gets, Roach manages to convey a sense of respect and appreciation for her subjects."
― Roy Rivenburg, Los Angeles Times

"Roach is authoritative, endlessly curious and drolly funny. Her research is scrupulous and winningly presented."
― Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"Mary Roach is one of an endangered species: a science writer with a sense of humor. She is able to make macabre funny without looting death of its dignity."
― Brian Richard Boylan, Denver Post

"Roach writes in an insouciant style and displays her métier 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, Booklist

"Acutely entertaining, morbidly fascinating."
― Susan Adams, Forbes

About the Author

Mary Roach is the author of six best-selling works of nonfiction, including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and, most recently,?Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War.?Her writing has appeared in?Outside,?National Geographic, and the?New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

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Product details

Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (May 17, 2004)
Language : English
Paperback : 303 pages
ISBN-10 : 0393324826
ISBN-13 : 978-0393324822
Lexile measure : 1230L
Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Forensic Medicine (Books)
- #5 in Medical Research (Books)
- #15 in Medical Anatomy

Customer Reviews:
3,751 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		75%
4 star		15%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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K Blake

First of all the good, I like the history and all the research ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018

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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.

105 people found this helpful

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Miss Frost

The title is a bit misleading...

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2019

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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.

59 people found this helpful

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Cindy Lou Hernandez

Don't Read This If You're An Animal Lover

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2018

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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.

65 people found this helpful

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Marie-Jo Fortis

BOOK OF SHAME

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2019

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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

33 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

DaveTT

Thought Provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2016

Verified 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.

29 people found this helpful

Andrea Wilkie

Very interesting, weird too in parts but good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2020

Verified 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)

2 people found this helpful

Devere Wolfe

Never to late to learn

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2018

Verified 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.

4 people found this helpful

Rae

Not for everyone but a fabulous read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

If you're interested in cadavers and the many possible outcome for cadavers after death this fascinating, well-researched book is for you. Packed with fascinating information, anecdotes and lots of dark humour, this book is not for the squeamish, but it is for those seeking knowledge about what does, can, should and should not happen to your body after you die.

Old Peculier

Compare carefully with similar books before buying

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

Having just read the outstanding All that Remains: a Life in Death by Professor Dame Sue Black, this book by comparison was hard to read almost from page one. I had failed to notice that the Author is an American, so the first frustration was the US Spelling and strange grammar that I initially thought were typos. If you want to read a book on this general subject, but written by an expert authority with huge experience and a delightful writing style, then the clue is in this review.

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