Book Review: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003)

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is very educational and frequently funny, because author Mary Roach is curious, odd (in a good way!), and unafraid to broach icky topics. While morbid, Stiff reveals a whole new world, and might perhaps inspire readers to contemplate the possibility of contributing to a field--or various fields!--after one's passing.

In a nutshell, the book is about some of the various ways cadavers, or select bits of them, are used in different areas, such as surgery practice, crash impact testing, crime investigations, and so on. Each chapter is flavored with Roach's personal reflections and observations, revealing a fascination not with the macabre, but in the utility of, shall we say, expired biological masses with no consciousness. Roach's methodology, which consists of guided visits to the sites using cadavers, affords her firsthand glimpses (and smells, alas) of the many ways in which the formerly alive continue to serve a purpose.

There is a plethora of new information to be found in this work, the most useful to me being how exactly getting hit with a car works (the fender hits your ankle, the hood hits your hip, and you cartwheel into the windshield). Roach also describes the once-lucrative business of grave robbing, back in the days when physicians and medical schools had...less rigorous ethical standards. In addition, she details certain gruesome experiments in the past century, involving transplanting limbs and heads, performed in the name of discovery. And there's a chapter on crucifixion studies, too (?!).

Through it all, the author remains respectful about the subject matter, and declares herself willing to be used to advance science in her afterlife. Overall, Stiff is, like all of Roach's other books, immensely entertaining and edifying, and is a page-turner.

TL;DR: Interesting, funny, and sometimes horrifying. Recommended!

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