Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
Stiff is one of popular science's great achievements in tone: a book about human cadavers that is consistently, genuinely funny without ever feeling disrespectful. Roach travels to body farms, surgical training facilities, and crash-test labs to investigate the varied afterlives of donated bodies, and her approach — deadpan curiosity backed by meticulous research — makes even the most unsettling material feel illuminating rather than exploitative. Each chapter covers a distinct use of cadavers in science and history, from ballistics research to crucifixion experiments, giving the book an episodic structure that works both as entertainment and education. Roach is careful throughout to treat each body as having once belonged to a person, which grounds the humour in something more substantive. The footnotes are often the best part. Readers who find the tone occasionally too breezy have a point — the episodic format resists sustained argument — but for those who want science writing that genuinely surprises, Stiff delivers.
