FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Okay, you're thinking, this must be some kind of a joke. A humorous book about cadavers? Yup, and it works. Mary Roach takes the age-old question, "What happens to us after we die?" quite literally. And in Stiff, she explores the "lives" of human cadavers from the time of the ancient Egyptians all the way up to current campaigns for human composting. Along the way, she recounts with morbidly infectious glee how dead bodies are used for research ranging from car safety and plastic surgery (you'll cancel your next collagen injection after reading this!), to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.

Impossible (and irreverent) as it may sound, Roach has written a book about corpses that's both lively and fresh. She traveled around the globe to conduct her forensic investigations, and her findings are wryly intelligent. While the myriad uses for cadavers recounted are often graphic, Roach imbues her subject with a sense of dignity, choosing to emphasize the oddly noble purposes corpses serve, from organ donation to lifesaving medical research. Readers will come away convinced of the enormous debt that we, the living, owe to the study of the remains of the dead. And while it may not offer the answer to the ancient mystery we were hoping for, Stiff offers a strange sort of comfort in the knowledge that, in a sense, death isn't necessarily the end. (Spring 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS

From medicinal mummies to cadaver models for crash-test dummies, a San Francisco writer presents a well-researched, lively dissection of offbeat ways that the dead have served the living and treats medical and ethical issues. Not a life or death matter, but a spell checker/editor missed the use of "piece" for "peace" (p.150). Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

In the twelfth century, the bazaars of Arabia were known to offer an exotic and allegedly salutary concoction called "mellified man" -- essentially human remains steeped in honey. Mellified man was also known as "human mummy confection," and one recipe for it called specifically for "a young, lusty man" as the main ingredient. This strange footnote in the history of death and decay is recalled by Mary Roach in her surprisingly lively Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. "Cadavers," Roach writes, "are our superheroes: They brave fire without flinching, withstand falls from tall buildings and head-on car crashes into walls. "We learn, among other notable macabre facts, that a detached human head is about the size and weight of a roaster chicken, that King Ptolemy I of Egypt first green-lighted autopsies in 300 B.C., that embalming-fluid companies once sponsored best-preserved-body contests, and that the French at the time of the Revolution were obsessed with discovering how long guillotined heads remained aware of their surroundings.

Roach reports that the next big thing on the mortuary horizon is something called the "tissue digestor," which replaces the outmoded options of burial or cremation with, essentially, a big tub of lye. In Rest in Peace, the historian Gary Laderman looks into the culture of funeral homes in America, noting that embalming took off after the Lincoln assassination and became a booming business in the twentieth century, nudged along by the popularity of mummy films and a burgeoning class of undertakers leafing through Casket & Sunnyside magazine. As Roach puts it: "Death. It doesn't have to be boring." (Mark Rozzo)

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. Agent, Jay Mandel. (Apr.) Forecast: Do we detect a trend to necrophilia? Two years ago it was mummies; in the last few months we have seen an account of the journeys of the corpse of Elmer McCurdy and a defense of undertakers; and now comes Roach's disquisition on cadavers. But death is, after all, a subject that just won't go away. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

VOYA - Lynn Evarts

What happens to cadavers that are not sedately interred? If one donates one's body to science, what can be expected? How do surgeons become so skillful with their scalpels? From serving as a crash test dummy to starring in reanimation experiments, human cadavers have led interesting second lives throughout history. Bodies were stolen from cemeteries and dissected to learn more about anatomy. Bodies from airliner crashes often tell more about the crash than the black box from the cockpit. This book is chock full of interesting and rather entertaining bits of cadaver lore from long ago and today, leading the reader on a stroll through the Body Farm of history. Roach approaches the macabre topic of the body after death with knowledge and a sense of absurd humor. She even manages to make a rather entertaining event of the tale of plastic surgeons putting the head in a roasting pan and artistically remodeling a nose. Students will respond to the gory aspect of this book, but once the immediate appeal wears thin, they will continue to be intrigued by the minutiae that Roach reveals about cadavers. The toe tag cover will catch their interest, and even those writing reports will find very useful information on death, organ transplants, and being buried alive. VOYA CODES: 4Q 3P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, W. W. Norton, 303p.; Illus. Photos. Biblio., Ages 12 to 18.

KLIATT - Daniel Levinson

Roach is a most skilled magazine journalist, with a flair for both the telling fact and the astonishing perspective. Imagine a whole book on human cadavers and you'd never conceive of all the fascinating elements she explores in this well-received book (included in numerous "best of 2003" lists). Whether you'll want the book for your collection might depend on how much interest you think students would have in 25-30 page chapters that cover: the early history of anatomy and its sordid start in body thefts; human crash dummies and the search for auto safety; ballistics tests using the recently departed; mortuaries and the knowledge of human decay; and what plane crash remains can tell us about the cause of an air disaster. There are also side trips to explore decapitation, brains and souls, and medical cannibalism. Roach deftly mixes glib humor and a respect for human dignity in the most undignified of settings. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Norton, 303p. illus. bibliog., Ages 15 to adult.

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