Gulp

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
© 2013 Mary Roach
352 pages

Mary Roach is no stranger to delving into topics which others find icky -- like corpses. Even her more conventional works flirt with taboo, and in Gulp she embraces disgust whole-heartedly, by treating readers with iron stomachs to a discussion of all things digestive. Gulp is not, strictly speaking, a book about the digestive system. Instead, it's a history of the odder means scientists through the centuries have fashioned to study it, though some of the questions themselves are startling enough (how many cellphones can you pack into a rectum?) Its intent is more entertaining than educational, but readers will glean an understanding of how our body works regardless, and perhaps learn more than they wished they knew. The body's own structure gives Roach an organizational structure her other books might lack: her record of experiments follows the 'alimentary canal', an older name for the digestive tract, from our tongue right through the intestines and out the other side, pausing for a great many fart jokes.  Roach is definitely a 'popular' science writer in that she writes for the lowest common denominator, appealing to as many readers as can be possibly found who are willing to read about spit and constipation.  This is not a work that takes itself seriously; it is disgusting, funny, and informative in that order. Largely entertaining,  but a touch on the gratuitous side.

Packing for Mars

Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void
© 2010 Mary Roach
334 pages

It's a long way to Tipperary. 

Humans are not extremophiles. We have very specific environmental requirements for not dying in all manner of unpleasant ways, and space doesn't meet a single one. As a consequence, NASA has spent a great deal of time studying various aspects of life in space, asking questions and following up on them with studies: how does the lack of gravity effect human physiology?  What happens when you don't shower for two weeks?  How long can two people live together in a confined place without doing something unfortunate to the other?   Mary Roach, full of irreverent questions of her own, tags along while scientists try to find out.

Many of the experiments have already been done, and so Roach is left with digging through archives and asking questions, but there are still a few avenues open --  in experiencing zero-gravity, for instance -- for writers like Roach who prefer the direct approach.  Every human need on Earth -- including eating, drinking, resting, and excretion just for starters -- must be seen to, but life beyond Earth's bounds has its own unique considerations. The aforementioned lack of gravity atrophies the bones, but when NASA began running experiments they were concerned it would do more. What if our hearts require gravity to function properly? Gravity is just the beginning, as scientists and engineers have fretted over the effect of G-forces and an extended diet of 'astronaut food'.

Packing for Mars is a playful account of the history of human space exploration that contains more scientific discussion than either Spooked or Stiffed alongside Roach's usual offerings of zany, off-topic footnotes. Most of her information is gleaned from the American, Japanese, and Soviet space campaigns, and the book stands to be relevant for the next few decades, given the inevitability of further human space activity. If human space exploration is of any interest to you, then Packing is definitely of interest -- both illuminating and fun.

Related:

• Any book on Skylab, the main purpose of which was to see what happened to humans who lived in space for  prolonged periods of time. My high-school library had a copy of a Skylab book which I read several times: I think this may be it.
• Space Stations: Base-Camps to the Stars, a history of human attempts to establish habitats in space and a look at what the future might bring. I've read it in recent years, though it may have predated this blog. The book itself is a bit dated, having been written while the International Space Station was still in the planning phrase and known as "Freedom". 

Spook

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
© 2005 Mary Roach
311 pages

Having so thoroughly enjoyed Stiff last week, I visited the library this past Wednesday with the intent of reading more by the same author. I've walked by this book hundreds of times and even contemplated it a time or two: though I've never been interested in afterlives, tales of ghosts have fascinated me my entire life. I used to read books of 'real' ghost stories as a kid, and every time I pass by a certain building rumored to be haunted on campus, I linger to see if some trick of the light causes me to see a phantom in the window, watching me as he, the old profiteer, searches for his buried treasure*.

Mary Roach is simply curious about the subject of the afterlife, and approaches it not with hopeful credulity or intent-to-debunk. She is more a skeptic than a believer, doing Occam's razor proud and referring more than once to what is now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and its flagship magazine The Skeptical Inquirer. The book begins in New Delhi, where Roach tags along with a man who evaluates the claims of those who remember their past lives as specific individuals.  Her methods of research go beyond reading and interviews; as in Stiff, she prefers the direct approach, enrolling herself in a class for would-be mediums and practicing cold reading .(The secret, as she finds out, is make broad statements and rely on clues from the person's speech and dress to make more specific statements based on their environment.) She briefly considers taking a drug to induce a near-death experience, but doesn't like the idea of people watching her eyes roll backwards in her head while she has a seizure.

Because Roach's approach is scientific, she avoids simply telling ghost stories and focuses on cases where scientific apparatuses and terminology were used by those who attempted to find the soul or otherwise gain information about the afterlife. Some cases seem as though they would be far removed from science -- particularly the 19th century phenomenon of spiritualism -- but Roach reminds the reader that stories of communicating to the dead through devices surfaced in the same period that people were being asked to accept electricity and telephone conversation.

Spook is fun, replete with odd stories in the human search for finding out what might lie beyond death and supplemented by Roach's wit and hilarious devil-may-care forwardness. I don't think it will give the hopeful-but-unconvinced anything to truly hope for, although some approaches gave me something to think about.  Roach almost seems to want to believe in the survival of our consciousness, but can find nothing to base that hope on.  Some near-death experiences -- people recounting having floated above their bodies and "saw" things while they were unconscious --  were interesting, but I have great faith in the human brain's ability to misbehave and so, like Roach,  require studies that eliminate odd occurrence common in anecdotes.


* He buried his savings in his peach orchard at the advance of the Federal army in 1865, the story goes, and continues to search for it 'til this day. Unfortunately for him, the peach orchard is long gone, replaced by a pretty building that used to be our library.

Stiff

Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
© 2003 Mary Roach
303 pages

Being dead is absurd. It's the silliest situation you'll find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it.  - p.11

Stiff is a lively book about the dead -- odd, thoughtful, informative, and oddly funny. Over the course of a dozen chapters, Mary Roach finds out what becomes of us when we cease to be. Her journey starts in the world of science, where surgeons practice their art, drawing on the lessons of anatomists who were themselves taught by the dead. Vocational opportunities for corpses abound, particularly in testing automobile airbags and armaments.  Forensics specialists and other detectives find them particularly helpful. And then there are the odder uses people find for the recently deceased -- recreating the crucifixion of Jesus, or attempting to make severed heads come alive by supplying them with oxygenated blood.

My first thought after settling in to read this was that I should've saved it for Halloween:  part of the holiday is making light of death and other mysterious or frightening things. My reaction to death has always been fascination rather than fear, hence my attraction to this book. Even those who find death intimidating will be able to enjoy Mary Roach's approach: the book is saturated with dry humor, interesting tales, Roach's occasional tangents. She prefers a hands-on approach to investigation, taking the reader into embalming studios, body farms, Chinese mortuaries rumored to be the source of "human dumplings", and an abandoned laboratory where the first head transplants were attempted.

While readers can expect to learn quite a bit about the use of entomology in forensics,  the history of anatomy,  and the benefits of being a brain-in-a-jar, discovering how people who interact with decedents on a regular basis relate to their work fascinated me. Some objectify the dead, imagining them as a faceless mass of tissue, while others hold memorial services and give their subject bodies names. How the living relate to the dead is a major theme of the book, and another reason why I would've liked to read it around Halloween.

The information, humor, and musings make the book a memorably enjoyable experience, and I'd recommend it provided you aren't too squeamish. While Roach isn't gratuitously graphic, it's a book about dead bodies. Don't read the chapter on body farms if you're within three hours of a meal. I'll be reading more of Roach.,