Mary Roach

A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Jasper

We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

As always, Roach is funny and interesting; this was particularly engaging to contrast with Doughty's From Here to Eternity, which is similar but covers different ground.

Sarah Sammis

The book was as good, perhaps better, than the radio reviews I've heard. The book is fascinating. I knew of some of the ways that cadavers are used in research and teaching but I still learned a lot of things. Roach writes in a humorous and informative way. Each chapter focuses on a different way in which cadavers are useful to the living or how they are treated by the living. The book in its style and to some degree it's subject is similar to The Mummy Congress; so if you liked Stiff then you'll like the other.

circle of life moment is me reading this on my birthday so thanks i guess

Laura Mauler

This book is great because it reads like a conversation with your most interesting friend.

Do you know how bad of a writer you have to be to take a topic related to my degree of study and make it boring??

The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Stiff

Denaiir

I was quite interested at first, but they it started going in all different kinds of directions and I completely lost interest. It was too short on each topic to be really informative, and at the same time many of the topics were of no interest to me. I found it quite difficult to finish, it quickly became boring, and the topic is one of my passions so I really didn't think it could be. I really didn't care about the fact that the author couldn't find her way to the crematorium in China and her taxi driver was going in circles... The parts about animals didn't sit right with me either.

Wynter

Last year my man and I visited Calgary on our way to the mountains and spontaneously decided to check out the Body Worlds exhibit in the local science museum. Because, you know, hanging out with human cadavers for a few hours is our idea of a romantic outing. The majority of the exhibit was exceptionally fascinating and educational, and considering the subject, not too outlandish, until we reached the curtained room that illustrated human reproduction and sexuality. Here we were, with a bunch of other museum goers, facing a table with two cadavers perpetually suspended in a cowgirl position. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the room wondering, Would these people donate their bodies to science if they knew they'd be displayed this way to strangers? Would this woman, now tenderly embracing a random chap underneath her, blush profusely and say, Nope, bury me six feet under? Needless to say, on my way out I just awkwardly shuffled past the sign up sheet calling for new donors.

See, I was still trying to assign human characteristics to the remains that seized to be humans long time ago. My logic told me that being the subject of studies that educate and contribute to life-saving research is the noblest way to go out, yet something primal in me urged to run for the hills. This is the subject that Mary Roach discusses in her book, Stiff. She argues that once a person passes it would make much more sense to be useful to humanity than simply laying in the ground. She investigates multiple branches of science that utilize cadavers, as well as explores ethical dilemmas and social stigmas associated with it. Bottom line: humans are uncomfortable talking about death and assign overblown meaning to dead bodies to avoid thinking about mortality, but they shouldn't. 

I thoroughly enjoyed pushing the boundaries of my own comfort zone while reading this book. I actually started rethinking my views on cremation in favour of pod burials. And this review must officially seal my weirdo reputation on the Internet. Hello, prospective employers :)

Michael Springer

When I die, I'm hoping for a viking funeral. Me and my broadsword on a big raft, and I'll be decked out in my regalia, and . . . oh, I suppose David and Emily will fight over who gets to fire a flaming arrow onto it . . . apparently we'll need some kindling, unless my regalia has been doused with gasoline. Yes, lets go with gasoline. I'll explode into a ball of flame as I drift down the Eerie Canal. Since I'm an athiest, I doubt I'll make it into Valhalla--then again, the idea of waiting around and/or doing battle for all of eternity sounds boring and/or unpleasant. 
 
Barring that, I'm going to donate my body to science. My reasoning is this: I don't want to get stuck in a box. Not fun now, not fun later. I equally don't want to get converted into pollution via incineration, and then dumped out in my favorite childhood park, or whatever people do with cremains. These aren't environmentally friendly ways to go, nor are they entertaining. 
 
Instead, I can be part of a science, which, from the depictions in this book, is a fucking awesome way to go. Perhaps my severed head will end up in a big row of severed heads of various shapes and sizes in a classroom somewhere! Students will try to keep their lunches down while opening my head and seeing all the gross inside parts! Or, perhaps they'll put my dead and naked body out in a field to study the decomposition process! I imagine the field is flat and green, with trees and a few birds . . . and dead bodies scattered all over the place! Can you imagine what it would be like to walk around in a field like that? Very surreal. 

As a socially conscious person, I want the world to be bettered in some way by my death (please resist the obvious joke). And, as a fan of surreal experiences as performance art, donating my body to science sounds like a great way to continue weirding people out long after my blood stops pumping. Yes, my decision has been made. Only through donating your body to science can you do something noble, socially responsible, and absolutely disgusting, all at the same time.

Since this is the closest I've ever come to writing a will, I'll go ahead and mention that none of you get anything: I'm taking it all with me on my blazing Valhalla raft. It's better to have it all close by, just in case there IS an afterlife.

Ryan LaFerney

A fascinating and funny look at the multiplicity of ways in which cadavers possibly benefit the living. As an Orthodox Christian, I didn't always agree with the ways cadavers were treated. But, this book did give me some food for thought about how and why Orthodox Christians should accept green burial. Stiff, doesn't completely dive into this, but does point out that the American funeral industry is unique. In most of the world burial is still a quite organic, natural part of family and community life (which Roach points out). Yet in America (and the West) we have turned death into a grotesque art form at best, or a macabre cult of greed and profit at the worst.

Still, the way science has utilized cadavers (for better and for worse) is a fascinating study that raises many ethical considerations and contains many shocking revelations.

renee badenoch

I like Mary Roach because she's flippant, funny, and irreverent; but those qualities did not always suit the nature of what she was talking about in the book, and the tone sometimes felt jarring and uncomfortable because of it. 

I was very interested in a lot of the research that was done in the book, and particularly liked learning about the process of donating cadavers to medical research/the complicated ethics surrounding body donation/and the many ways bodies are used after donation. 

I did not think Mary Roach did her due diligence in talking about medical racism, and the history of bodies that were taken and used without the consent of the person and their families. While she does talk about it happening to victims in Europe, she doesn't talk about the use of black and indigenous American bodies being used for medical research historically and currently. 

The section on the use of live animals for research was particularly difficult to read. I had to stop for a while because stories about [graphic animal violence] (view spoiler)[ dogs being shot by the military to learn about how to create different kinds of bullets, or pigs being beheaded in automobile accidents so car companies can create faster moving cars  (hide spoiler)] provoked a visceral reaction in me. While I didn't enjoy reading those parts, they definitely made me think about ways that the commodification of animals for meat has ethical impacts that expand beyond the food industry. Roach doesn't broach any queries into those implications, but I have been thinking about it quite a bit since.

Stephanie Ridiculous

Overall this was a fascinating read and I'm glad I picked it up. Aside from making me queasy a few times, there were a few parts I didn't particularly care for such as essentially making a joke out of the harmful stereotype about China and dogs, and with describing early colonial settlers. A few jokes absolutely failed to land as well, but I suppose humor is very subjective.

My biggest gripe with this book, though, is the chapter on crucifixion experiments. While all the other chapters have lengthy bibliographies and reference a plethora of resources, this chapter is woefully insufficient. It seems like Roach phoned this one in for the shock factor of it's inclusion and failed to give it the same level of respect and research her other topics received. And adjacent to that, the chapter I was most hesitant to read, about cannibalism, was mostly unsubstantiated rumors turned into more shock factor fluff, seemingly just to get you to read/be grossed out/I dunno what.

Despite all that, I learned a lot and have much to consider about my own future cadaver and what should be done with it.

Melanie Richards

Casey W. 

Sarah Escorsa

Xavier Roy

Makes one wonder about mortality and the human body after death... Not a book if you're squeamish.

Fernando Andrade

Lectura increíble. La autora realiza investigación exhaustiva sobre el uso de cadáveres humanos, para fines médicos, de seguridad o incluso militares. Nos habla del pasado y de los orígenes del estudio de la anatomía (a veces hilarante, a veces horripilante). Incluso toca el tema de los ladrones de tumbas, y del canibalismo (con fines médicos o gourmet). Todo con un sentido del humor cándido, y con el respeto necesario para abordar el tema. Cuatro estrellas, porque algunos de los capítulos son innecesariamente largos en mi opinión, y algunos de los temas más interesantes se tocan en capítulos más cortos.

Emily Ruth Carter

Extremely fascinating and written with great humor. There are some truly disturbing sections but they are disturbing mostly because it is a non fiction book.

Kerry Gibbons

Loved this book. Learned a lot. Mary Roach has a wickedly dark sense of humor that I really dig.

Be prepared that even the non-squeamish will struggle to read this while eating (hence why it took me nearly a month to finish)!

Michelle Xu

I listened to the audiobook version of this book.

It was incredibly interesting and I learned a lot about the use of human cadavers I had never known or thought of before. My favorite chapters were on the use of cadavers in car crash research and the use of cadavers to understand what happens when there is an airplane crash. Those were two areas of research where I didn't even know cadavers were being used.

The book also made me want to compost my body when I die (if not organ donation). Since I'm still in my 20's I'm hoping that composting bodies will be more mainstream in a couple decades.

The only one star off was probably that I didn't enjoy the actual voice over for the audiobook. I found her voice a little boring.

"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.

I really liked this book. I feel like it was a tad misleading in the beginning, as I was under the impression that it would be more forensic in nature and about the coroner's process, not medical donation. I don't mean to say that it's bad, but it was a little disappointing, since I for whatever reason was under the impression that it was something of a coroner's memoir.

She introduced a variety of different uses for cadavers and then added some history and controversy behind them. She writes in such a way that she will introduce herself into the story for the interviews and her experiences, before going into the rest of the information, only to pepper the information with her own opinions. I personally liked this way of writing, but it is a little different than what I've seen before. It took a while to adjust to the different style, but was enjoyable in the end.

Tannie Davidson

funny, disconcerting, informative, and entertaining all at once.

Danica Holdaway

This is weirdly one of the funnier books I’ve ever read?? But also I learned a lot about science and anatomy and history and religion and... everything?? Some chapters were a skim for me but this is a book I am very happy to have read.

Juliana Callahan

I really liked her sense of humor and the way she Incorporated it into her narration but it just wasn't what I was expecting and it fell sort of flat for me.

Note(1): This book discusses death and bodies. It also includes a lot of 'black humour'.
Note(2): This book also includes the use of animals in scientific experiments that may upset some readers

I loved this book. I also love when authors can make me love non-fiction books.

“Cadavers are our superheroes: They brave fire without flinching, withstand falls from tall buildings and head-on car crashes into walls. You can fire a gun at them or run a speedboat over their legs, and it will not faze them. Their heads can be removed with no deleterious effect. They can be in six places at once.” 

This book covers a lot of disgusting, cringe-worthy, uncomfortable, and confronting topics. I mean, it's a book about cadavers, so if you haven't braced yourself for that you may be in for a shock. 

This book also contains a LOT of super interesting information - information that is historical, experimental, practical, and unthinkable. 

When talking about cadavers, it is not surprising that there is a lot of medical and scientific subjects discussed. And yet, Roach's unique injection of dark humour, throughout makes this truly a unique and interesting read. 

While some readers may find it inappropriate, gaudy, or cringe-worthy to include humour while discussing such topics, I found it fitting. Dark humour is a common way in which humans make themselves comfortable while dealing with the idea of death, and it makes a unique addition to a piece of writing (not that I know of many other non-textbook writing that covers such topics).

As well as the interesting discussions of the many ways in cadavers live on and participate in the human society, I found Roach's explanations of how those in the cadaver field deal with this day-to-day particularly interesting and revealing. She does a great job in shifting your perception of the cadaver as a dead ex-person, in which one may attach emotions, to a vessel which is and never was the person who once resided in it. 

All in all I loved this book, and everything I learnt from it. I love how Roach made such a confronting topic one that is accessible and perhaps even enjoyable to the general public. And it has given me a lot to think about with what may become of my body once I am done using it.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

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