Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

by Mary Roach

This book tells you everything you ever wanted to know about what happens to bodies after they die. From a plastic surgeon's convention, where the doctors test out the latest nip n'tuck techniques on the recently expired, to the quest for the perfect crash test dummy, Mary Roach tracks down the dead and the people who spend their days with them. For 2000 years human cadavers have been at the forefront of scientific exploration. From testing the efficiency of the guillotine, experiments to weigh the soul, calibrating crash test dummies, to advances in modern medicine such as heart transplants, the deceased body has been a silent partner to many of the major advances in the understanding of ourselves.

• ISBN10: 0670912174
• ISBN13: 9780670912179
• Publish Date: 3 July 2003 (first published 20 May 2003)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 February 2005
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Viking
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

It takes a skilled hand to write about death and bodies without being either so respectful as to be boring or just morbid. Luckily, Mary Roach has just such a hand and her book, Stiff, is an interesting and wide-ranging look at what happens to us when we die. Well, no one really knows what happens to the soul/spirit/whatever it is that animates us (she does devote a chapter to this, which she develops into a book in its own right, Spook), but our bodies. There's the usual burial/cremation, but Roach is more interested in the options we don't usually consider: donating one's body to science for medical students to practice anatomy on, chemical cremation, even allowing for the use of one's body in automobile crash testing (the dummies aren't nearly realistic enough). Some people even want to be composted. It turns out there are a lot of things your body can get up to!

Death may be a part of life, but it's still a part of life that there are a lot of deep, unprocessed feelings about. This book only works because of the way Roach just nails the tone: there's a deep undercurrent of honest curiosity that's present as she explores her subject. She recounts her own experience sitting with her mother's body after her death and how it made her feel, and doesn't forget that the bodies she sees in her explorations were once someone else's loved one too. She's honest about the ugly side of things...to the point where I found one of the chapters, about using bodies to do research about how the body decomposes under various scenarios (to help law enforcement and pathologists/coroners better estimate how long bodies have been in the elements after death) a little icky. But it never feels gratuitous. She doesn't say something irreverent or gross just for the shock factor. If you've ever wondered what happens to the outside of you when you die, or if you're curious now that you've thought about it, this is an intriguing book and I highly recommend it.

[jamiereadthis]

The human body is a weird, wild thing. Also, Mary Roach is the best.

[adamfortuna]

Some great stories about the history of cadavers, but not too much else beyond that. I was looking for more humor interjected into the explanations, but it was far from Bill Bryson.

[ibeforem]

This book, about dead people and the sorts of things that are done to them in the name of science and mourning, completes our own personal Mary Roach trifecta. It was an interesting book… I didn’t realize all the different things that can happen to your body if you donate it to science. She even travels to China in search of a crematorium that allegedly used cadavers for dumplings in a family restaurant. It is definitely on the gory side, so if hearing about guts and bugs and unpleasant biological functions isn’t your bag, you might want to skip it. But if you’re curious, Roach does an excellent job of making non-fiction interesting and entertaining.

[empressbrooke]

Mary Roach writes on an interesting topic in an engaging voice, and her interest in the subject matter comes though quite clearly as she details her research on the use of cadavers. I will definitely be checking out her other books (one of which is about ghosts, and the other about sex - an interesting trifecta of subjects, when you get right down to it).

[Beth C.]

Fascinating glimpse into a part of life (after-life?) that most of us don't see or maybe even wish to see. Don't read on a full stomach or if you have the potential to be seriously grossed out easily!