Fascinating! I'm not a bit squeamish, probably due to my P.T. background where I dissected monkeys, higher primates and, finally, human cadavers. As long as they're dead, it doesn't bother me at all. So this book was wonderfully ghoulish and entertaining.

One WARNING though -- parts of the book (about halfway in) dealt with some animal experiments, mostly performed long ago, that had to involve a great deal of suffering, though the author did not elaborate on that aspect. But, still... I did have a hard time with the animal stories and was glad when that part was over.

But back to the humans. They were all dead, and her humor had me sometimes chuckling, and sometimes laughing out loud. Hard. I really do love this book. But I can see that it's not for everyone.

(But wait. There is one live-human part. And it's gruesome. What? You mean I'm not the only person in the world who wondered how long a guillotined head stayed conscious??? My burning question was finally answered.) ( )

I actually did enjoy it, but it was just too gross at times. I hate glossing over parts...but really....YUCK.
Otherwise, it was fascinating to learn about how some of the ideas of organ donors and a study about decomposition and how some of it all came about. But, when the book was over I was pretty glad I was done with it. ( )

Yikes! Maybe a little more information than I really wanted to know, but what a fascinating read! She's a terrific writer. ( )

Really interesting--with a caveat. The "humor" in this book is not funny. Like, at all. In fact, I found her sense of humor and jokes to be childish at best and highly distracting. I'm sure some will find it funny, but for me it was just juvenile and inserted so much at many points in the book that it felt forced and overloaded.

Now that that is out of the way...I really enjoyed the information in this book. It's probably not a great read for the squeamish, but it is highly informative and I learned a lot about cadavers that I didn't know before--from the history of human dissection to current research on how bodies decompose to aid forensics. ( )

This had some very interesting parts, but a little over halfway through I began to lose interest as the topics related to cadavers got more bizarre or minutely focused. This first chapters deal with the history of uses for cadavers and how they changed and how the process for acquiring cadavers for study developed. Sections cover use of cadavers for learning anatomy at the beginning of medical and surgical professions, then uses for teaching today's doctors and refining new methods of surgery. Also covered is organ transplants, embalming and burial practices and the use of cadavers to study things like crash testing and decomposition. But sections on scientifically proving the weight of the soul and the Shroud of Jesus, consuming body parts in certain cultures to heal and determining whether a head from one species could work on another body all got a bit off-putting.

One point of interest is the fact that this is now 17 years old and I'm sure there have been developments in many of the areas touched upon, such as using cadavers to practice robotic surgery, computer imaging in medical research and the development of alternate substances to simulate body parts which make this study dated.

But I will admit that Mary Roach has a strong stomach. ( )