Mary Roach is back with curious and bizarre facts on offbeat topics. This time she covers the many different uses of human cadavers as well as alternatives to how they can be put to their final rest. It may seem ghastly, but Roach covers the many useful and important roles human cadavers can fill: a testing ground for doctors, and a medium of experimentation to improve forensic science, just to name a couple. She also lists others that are far more disturbing, but I'll let you discover those for yourself. Roach also covers several methods for interring the remains of a body, both traditional and newly discovered. If you think the concept of human composting is ghoulish, just listen to her description of traditional embalming... it might change your mind about our traditional burial practices.
Generally, I appreciate Roach's approach to the subjects she write about, but I felt that she occasionally chose words to deliberately push the reader's buttons. Nonetheless, this was interesting, but there were times I had to stop listening to regain my composure.
audio: 8 hours
print: 303 pages
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