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Stiff
- The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 8 hrs
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Editorial reviews
Publisher's summary
For two thousand years, cadavers (some willingly, some unwittingly) have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
Critic reviews
- Alex Award Winner, 2004
"Uproariously funny....informative and respectful...irreverent and witty....impossible to put down." (Publishers Weekly)
"Not grisly but inspiring, this work considers the many valuable scientific uses of the body after death." (Library Journal)
"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year." (Entertainment Weekly)
Featured Article: A Future Corpse's Guide to Death Acceptance
Confronting death does not necessitate a spiral into despondency. Instead we may come a realization that, in acknowledging and accepting this fate, we paradoxically lead fuller and more emotionally present lives. In this list, scholars, physicians, journalists, philosophers, and death professionals share their stories, perspectives, and advice, offering a glimpse into how we can prepare for the end with grace, heart, and humor.
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Story
Best-selling author Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. Roach takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: The questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts?
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Funtastic Voyage
- By Mel on 04-05-13
By: Mary Roach
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Heart
- A History
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As cardiologist and best-selling author Sandeep Jauhar tells in The Heart, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ.
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Fascinating Insight
- By Ironcharles on 10-27-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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Healing Hearts
- A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
- By: Kathy Magliato
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of fewer than a dozen female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group - those surgeons who perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who also calls herself a wife and mother.
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Healing Hearts
- By Jean on 01-14-12
By: Kathy Magliato
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Shocked
- Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead
- By: David Casarett M.D.
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Not too long ago, there was no coming back from death. But now, with revolutionary medical advances, death has become just another serious complication. As a young medical student, Dr. David Casarett was inspired by the story of a two-year-old girl named Michelle Funk. Michelle fell into a creek and was underwater for over an hour. When she was found she wasn't breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. That drowning should have been fatal. But after three hours of persistent work, a team of doctors and nurses was able to bring her back.
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Dead vs. Sincerely Dead
- By Gillian on 06-24-16
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The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth
- And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Morris
- Narrated by: Thomas Morris, Ruper Farley
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in the 19th century is just one of many strange tales that have long lain undiscovered in the pages of old medical journals. Award-winning medical historian Thomas Morris delivers one of the most remarkable, cringe-inducing collections of stories ever assembled.
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Boring Toilet Humor
- By Nemo on 01-30-20
By: Thomas Morris
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The Undead
- Organ Harvesting, The Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
- By: Dick Teresi
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.
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Eye opening
- By Amy Giglio on 07-01-18
By: Dick Teresi
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The Demon in the Freezer
- A True Story
- By: Richard Preston
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The first major bioterror event in the United States - the anthrax attacks in October 2001 - was a clarion call for scientists who work with "hot" agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a number-one New York Times best seller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
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Pretty interesting listening in a horrific way
- By S A on 09-19-03
By: Richard Preston
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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Severed
- A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
- By: Frances Larson
- Narrated by: Reay Kaplan
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, anthopologist Frances Larson here explores our macabre fixation with severed heads.
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Interesting, but……
- By Mad City Signs on 05-16-22
By: Frances Larson
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Final Exam
- A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
- By: Pauline W. Chen
- Narrated by: Pauline W. Chen
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Pauline Chen began medical school 20 years ago, she dreamed of saving lives. What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Almost immediately, Chen found herself wrestling with medicine's most profound paradox: that a profession premised on caring for the ill also systematically depersonalizes dying. Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her education, training, and practice as she grapples at strikingly close range with the problem of mortality.
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Not just about end of life
- By Paul Mullen on 03-25-07
By: Pauline W. Chen
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Tell Me Where It Hurts
- Humor, Healing and Hope in my Life as an Animal Surgeon
- By: Dr. Nick Trout
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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From the frontlines of modern medicine, Tell Me Where it Hurts is a fascinating insider portrait of a veterinarian, his furry patients, and the blend of old-fashioned instincts and cutting-edge technology that defines pet care in the 21st century. Dr. Trout takes the listener on a vicarious journey through 24 intimate, heartrending hours in his life.
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So close, yet not quite.
- By ButterLegume on 04-18-13
By: Dr. Nick Trout
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Flu
- The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
- By: Gina Kolata
- Narrated by: Gina Kolata
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Feeling feverish, tired, or achy? Listening to Gina Kolata's engrossing account of the 1918 Influenza epidemic is sure to give you the chills. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and considers what can be done to prevent it.
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overexcited
- By Marilyn on 07-23-03
By: Gina Kolata
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Under the Knife
- A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations
- By: Arnold van de Laar, Andy Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Rich Keeble
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the story of the desperate man from 17th-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell, or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery?
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Why did a surgeon need a fast horse?
- By India Clamp on 10-18-18
By: Arnold van de Laar, and others
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I laughed, I cried, and I even got a little spooked at the end.
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Great stories!
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There is just something with Caitlin Doughty...
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
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Loved it So Much I Bought it After Reading it Free
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Boring!
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Forensics
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The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.
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Crime Seen
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Down Among the Dead Men
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- Narrated by: Liz Holliss
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Michelle Williams, an attractive young woman with close family ties and an active social life, describes her first extraordinary year in her unusual new job as a mortuary technician. It’s a year in which, with innate good humour, she encounters death at its most tragic, bizarre, and hilarious. Her tale, neither gruesome nor sad, is enlivened by a range of colourful and eccentric characters, from pathologists and coroners to hospital porters and undertakers, giving us a glimpse of life - and death - that few of us will ever experience.
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Things you never wanted to know about a mortuary
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By: Michelle Williams, and others
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Bad Call
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Bad Call is Mike Scardino's visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers he spent working as an "ambulance attendant" on the mean streets of late-1960s New York. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett's hot dogs, young Mike spends his days speeding from one chaotic emergency to another. His adventures take him into the middle of incipient race riots, to the scene of a plane crash at JFK airport and into private lives all over Queens, where New Yorkers are suffering, and dying, in unimaginable ways.
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I loved this book!
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Written in Bone
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In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.
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A very human story by a very believable human
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What listeners say about Stiff
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- POQA
- 11-11-12
I worked with cadavers for years, but....
I've worked with cadavers, I've dissected them, taught students from them, studied from them. I've learned to appreciate the incredible gift of body donation. There is NOTHING that can take the place of actual human cadavers for the study of the human body. It was entertaining to hear a non-medical person's point of view and the author's warped sense of humor was for the most part entertaining. I read the paperback book, and then a few years later I listened to the audiobook. The narration was excellent in portraying what I believe to be the authors intended tone and voice, however her constant mispronounced terminology will probably be very distracting at first, if not down-right irritating. After you get used to the mispronouncing of words, the listener can begin to hear the tale. BUT WARNING, this book is not for the weak at heart. The author uses graphic descriptions of how human bodies have been used to further knowledge of medical science, automobile safety, organ transplantation and even effectiveness of bullet proof vests worn by our armed forces. At first the jovial tone of the book seemed disrespectful since as a student I was warned that any conversation that was inappropriate or disrespectful of my cadaver would earn me a failing grade and dismissal from the course. I suspect the cavalier, jovial tone of writing is what makes the subject palatable for the layman.
All in all, an excellent book with great information that will hopefully change people's mind on the importance of organ donation and how critical body donation is to science. As people come to understand this,perhaps doors will open and opposition will end so that more studies can be done to increase our knowledge base. Perhaps some may even consider personally donating their body to science.
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90 people found this helpful
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- Matthew
- 03-15-04
Darn funny if you're open to the idea.
If you believe the subject of cadavers should be treated somberly under all circumstances, you'll want to take a pass on this one. If, on the other hand, you have an irreverent sense of humor and believe that there some sort of humor in almost every slice of life (and death), then you're going to love this book. Informative, well-written, witty, and done in a mostly tasteful way (it is about cadavers after all), Stiff is a fresh book that explores a topic and a world that most of us never glimpse.
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66 people found this helpful
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- Jim "The Impatient"
- 05-31-17
DEATH DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BORING
A HEAD IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE
Not a subject for everyone, but I found it entertaining and informative. For one thing, I was amazed to learn about body snatching. I had heard about this in the many B movies, I watched as a kid, but I thought they were making it up. Turns out it happened often. Matter of fact a student at medical school could pay his tuition in corpses, and not even use money.
THESE WERE TRYING TIMES FOR POULTRY
I don't know if it was the author or the narrator, but most of the time the humor just DIED. It is still a quality listen.
GROSS ANATOMY
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60 people found this helpful
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- Joel
- 05-28-05
Wonderful and En'gross'ing
I wouldn't have thought it possible to treat this sometimes unpleasant topic with equal parts humour and respect. Mary Roach succeeds admirably in both aspects. I listened to this book almost straight through, with my responses ranging from cringing to laughing out loud.
Shelly Frasier is an excellent casting choice for this book as her voice has a sultry tone to it. It is not clinical at all.
Highly recommended if you're not squeamish.
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50 people found this helpful
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- California Rose
- 06-04-08
facinating
When I was a student, in 1984, I took a summer class in which I prepared cadavers for the next semester's anatomy and physiology class. It was one of the best summer's of my life. Those memories will carry me to my grave, so to speak. One of the cadavers that I worked on was a physician (in his former life), one was a woman, and one was a man of no particular distinction. I am now a nurse of some 24 years. My experiences then still reverberate to this day. This book addresses all of the feelings and emotions that I experienced at that time. It is an amazing, humorous, light-hearted, yet serious work, that captured the essence of what it means to be a cadaver. No small feat. Bravo, Mary Roach. Well done.
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39 people found this helpful
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- Shannon
- 04-23-08
Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it
Although this book verges on the macabre at some points, with extremely graphic descriptions of, say, bodies rotting in an empty lot, I found it fascinating. I liked the many uses for cadavers, the descriptions of the science of various specialities, and the history of anatomical and cadaver studies. The author has a quirky sense of humor, and many of her quips are things I would have thought myself. I also liked the narrator's voice, which was pleasant and not too serious. Unfortunately, neither the narrator nor the producer ensured that the narrator pronounced all the words correctly. Almost every chapter had at least one mispronunciation that jarred me. Among them "Oriana Fal-ah-see" (Oriana Fallaci - which I admit is not a common name), "Rooters" (Reuters), and "apokethary" (apothecary - which she pronounces correctly a few lines later.) This book has by far the largest number of mispronunciations of the seventy or so I've listened to. It is nonetheless an interesting, informative and strangely enjoyable listen.
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32 people found this helpful
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- J. N. Bowling
- 03-23-09
You cut heads off! You cut heads off!!
Funniest non-fiction I've ever read! This is a fantastic read. To those who criticized the "unnecessary" gruesomeness... it's about dead people!! Come on!! The author does a fine job respectfully making light of something people are way to squeamish about. I highly recommend this book. It was a fun read, and educational at the same time - just the sort for which I was looking.
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27 people found this helpful
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- Clint
- 04-20-04
Great book!
This was actually a very interesting and well researched book & and was generally a lot of fun to listen to. The reader was fantastic, too. Her "smoky" voice was compelling, without being overly dramatic. Be prepared, though, for the stories of brutality that some (I hope not many) "scientists" (and I use the word loosely, at least with some of them as described here)brutalized (and still brutalize, I know) defenseless animals, in the name of "science". The people that I am describing truly, in my opinion, have cold hearts and no empathy for other living things. The book, as a whole, was top notch and very enlightening. The "experiments" are just part of the story, I guess.
Overall, I highly endorse this audiobook.
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25 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 11-17-11
Who Knew?
Not for the faint of heart, this book examines in detail possible uses and methods of handling the human body a life after death I had never considered. The author deftly hanbles the subject with surprising humor. The narrator was excellent.
I enjoyed this book.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Julie
- 04-20-04
This is a light, wonderful book.
The author is incredibly witty and clever. She writes like an old friend sharing a funny store with you in a coffee shop. I've bought it for 2 friends already, and the feedback from them has been just as positive as my experience with it.
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17 people found this helpful