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For two thousand years, cadavers - some willingly, some unwittingly
- have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest
undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the
NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test
the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the
mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from
heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have
helped make history in their quiet way. "Delightful-though never
disrespectful" (Les Simpson, Time Out New York), Stiff investigates
the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the
question: What should we do after we die? "This quirky, funny read
offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical
profession. . . . You can close this book with an appreciation of
the miracle that the human body really is." -Tara Parker-Pope, Wall
Street Journal "Gross, educational, and unexpectedly
sidesplitting." -Entertainment Weekly
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2021 'Delightful' Ed Yong What's to be done
about a drunken elephant? A monkey caught mugging passers-by? A
trespassing squirrel? Follow Mary Roach as she investigates laser
scarecrows, robo-hawks, human-elephant conflict specialists and
monkey impersonators. Travel to the bear-busy back alleys of Aspen,
the gull-vandalized floral displays at the Vatican and
leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Himalayas. In this fresh, funny
and thoroughly researched book, dive into the weird and wonderful
moments when humanity and wildlife bump up against one another.
What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's
thatthe million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my
me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day?
Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out,
Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of
contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers,
engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life
goes on after we die. She begins the journey in rural India with a
reincarnation researcher and ends up in a University of Virginia
operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near
the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences. Along the
way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets
electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario, and visits
a Duke University professor with a plan to weigh the consciousness
of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking
philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves' heads, a
North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for
ghosts, and the last surviving sample of "ectoplasm" in a Cambridge
University archive.
In Bonk, the best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous
curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of
all: sex. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Why doesn't Viagra
help women-or, for that matter, pandas? Can a dead man get an
erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Mary Roach shows us how and why
sexual arousal and orgasm-two of the most complex, delightful, and
amazing scientific phenomena on earth-can be so hard to achieve and
what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking
and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals
that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put
on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary
Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence
but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a
discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife
biology. Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics
investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers,
and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels
from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St.
Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for
Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate
floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a
vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Combining
little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a
motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and
trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as
about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife,
she finds, humans are more often the problem-and the solution.
Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate
coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.
What is it like to float weightlessly in the air? What happens if
you vomit in your helmet during a spacewalk? How do astronauts go
to the bathroom? Is it true that they don't shower? Can farts
really be deadly in space? Best-selling Mary Roach has the answers.
In this whip-smart, funny, and informative young readers adaptation
of her best-selling Packing for Mars, Roach guides us through the
irresistibly strange, frequently gross, and awe-inspiring realm of
space travel and life without gravity. From flying on NASA's
Weightless Wonder to eating space food, Packing for Mars for Kids
is chock-full of firs-hand experiences and thorough research. Roach
has crafted an authoritative and accessible book that is perfectly
pitched to inquiring middle grade readers.
For fans of Gut by Giulia Enders Eating is the most pleasurable,
gross, necessary, unspeakable biological process we undertake. But
very few of us realise what strange wet miracles of science operate
inside us after every meal - let alone have pondered the results
(of the research). How have physicists made crisps crispier? What
do laundry detergent and saliva have in common? Was self-styled
'nutritional economist' Horace Fletcher right to persuade millions
of people that chewing a bite of shallot seven hundred times would
yield double the vitamins? In her trademark, laugh-out-loud style,
Mary Roach breaks bread with spit connoisseurs, beer and pet-food
tasters, stomach slugs, potato crisp engineers, enema exorcists,
rectum-examining prison guards, competitive hot dog eaters, Elvis'
doctor, and many more as she investigates the beginning, and the
end, of our food.
"America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) takes us down
the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic
Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in
their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the
universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is
crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for
flavors and smells? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much
can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you?
Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the
questions no one else thinks of-or has the courage to ask. We go on
location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into
a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our
side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists,
Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy
water rectally), rabbis and terrorists-who, it turns out, for
practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach's books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it
is about human bodies.
Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most
challenging adversaries-panic, exhaustion, heat, noise-and
introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary
Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team
as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She
visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and
learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a
repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine
Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp
Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a
threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs
an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all
night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine
USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on
the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding
gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors
than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you'll never see
our nation's defenders in the same way again.
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive:
air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space
exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be
human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they
take? What happens to you when you can t walk for a year? have sex?
smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a
space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout
at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies
set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space
simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it s possible to preview
space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training
toilet to a crash test of NASA s new space capsule (cadaver filling
in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip
into the science of life in space and space on Earth.
Few things are as fundamental to human happiness as sex, and few
writers are as entertaining about the subject as Mary Roach. Can a
woman think herself to orgasm? Is your penis three inches longer
than you think? Why doesn't Viagra help women - or, for that
matter, pandas? Does orgasm boost fertility? Or cure hiccups? The
study of sexual physiology - what happens, and why, and how to make
it happen better - has been taking place behind closed doors for
hundreds of years. In this fascinating and funny book, Mary Roach
steps inside laboratories, brothels, pig farms, sex-toy R&D
labs - even Alfred Kinsey's attic - to tell us everything we wanted
to know about sex, and more we'd never even thought to ask.
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking
and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals
that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put
on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary
Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence
but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a
discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife
biology. Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics
investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers,
and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels
from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St.
Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for
Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate
floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a
vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Combining
little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a
motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and
trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as
about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife,
she finds, humans are more often the problem-and the solution.
Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate
coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive:
air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space
exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be
human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they
take? What happens to you when you can t walk for a year? have sex?
smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a
space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout
at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies
set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space
simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it s possible to preview
space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training
toilet to a crash test of NASA s new space capsule (cadaver filling
in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip
into the science of life in space and space on Earth."
What happens to your body after you have died? Fertilizer? Crash
Test Dummy? Human Dumpling? Ballistics Practise? Life after death
is not as simple as it looks. Mary Roach's Stiff lifts the lid off
what happens to our bodies once we have died. Bold, original and
with a delightful eye for detail, Roach tells us everything we
wanted to know about this new frontier in medical science.
Interweaving present-day explorations with a history of past
attempts to study what it means to be human Stiff is a deliciously
dark investigations for readers of popular science as well as fans
of the macabre. 'Spry, common, sharp-witted survey brings a whole
new meaning to the phrase "Life after death"' Sunday Times 'One of
the funniest and most unusual books of the year' Entertainment
Weekly 'Every chapter packed with more arresting details elegantly
humourously expressed than one can hope for' Sunday Telegraph
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2021 'Delightful' Ed Yong What's to be done
about a drunken elephant? A monkey caught mugging passers-by? A
trespassing squirrel? Follow Mary Roach as she investigates laser
scarecrows, robo-hawks, human-elephant conflict specialists and
monkey impersonators. Travel to the bear-busy back alleys of Aspen,
the gull-vandalized floral displays at the Vatican and
leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Himalayas. In this fresh, funny
and thoroughly researched book, dive into the weird and wonderful
moments when humanity and wildlife bump up against one another.
What is it like to float weightlessly in the air? What happens if
you vomit in your helmet during a spacewalk? How do astronauts go
to the bathroom? Is it true that they don't shower? Can farts
really be deadly in space? Best-selling Mary Roach has the answers.
In this whip-smart, funny, and informative young readers adaptation
of her best-selling Packing for Mars, Roach guides us through the
irresistibly strange, frequently gross, and awe-inspiring realm of
space travel and life without gravity. From flying on NASA's
Weightless Wonder to eating space food, Packing for Mars for Kids
is chock-full of firs-hand experiences and thorough research. Roach
has crafted an authoritative and accessible book that is perfectly
pitched to inquiring middle grade readers.
The study of sexual physiology-what happens, and why, and how to
make it happen better-has been a paying career or a diverting
sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and
James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors
of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D
labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic. Mary Roach, "the funniest science
writer in the country" (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted
the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person
think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal
orgasm a myth? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter,
pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and
orgasm, two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific
phenomena on earth, can be so hard to achieve and what science is
doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Science & Technology Book
Prize 'The most entertaining writer in science' - The Times, Books
of the Year War. Mention it and most of us think of history, of
conflicts on foreign soil, of heroism and compromise, of strategy
and weapons. But there's a whole other side to the gruesome
business of the battlefield. In Grunt, the inimitable Mary Roach
explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane,
uninfected and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances
of war. Setting about her task with infectious enthusiasm, she
sniffs World War II stink bombs, tests earplugs in a simulated war
zone and burns the midnight oil with the crew of a nuclear
submarine. Speaking to the scientists and the soldiers, she learns
about everything from life-changing medical procedures to
innovations as esoteric as firing dead chickens at fighter jets.
Engrossing, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, this is an
irresistible ride to the wilder shores of modern military life.
The impact of transformational leadership styles, management
strategies, and communication for organizational effectiveness and
employee performance within organizations cannot be overemphasized.
Leadership as a concept has evolved over the years based on
situations, practices, and change management approaches in
organizations. The evolution of transformational leadership in
organizations is imperative to examine in order to motivate and
encourage others to collectively support and work to achieve
organizational effectiveness or vision and mission. Leadership
needs a paradigm shift to influence opportunities and challenges in
organizations such as organizational behavior, motivation,
communication, and management functions. Transformational
Leadership Styles, Management Strategies, and Communication for
Global Leaders aims to provide relevant theoretical,
conceptual/procedural, and the latest empirical research findings
frameworks that critically examine the areas of leadership,
leadership styles, management studies, and communication for
leaders globally. It is designed for multi-sectoral interests in
business and educational organizations, chief executive officers,
executive members, team leaders, industry leaders, human resource
directors/personnel, leadership and management leaders, and
practitioners.
An oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.
For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries—from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them. 13 b/w illustrations.
"Droll, dark, and quite wise, Stiff makes being dead funny and fascinating and weirdly appealing."—Susan Orlean
"As fascinating as it is funny.... The research is admirable, the anecdotes carefully chosen, and the prose lively; and they combine to produce a book that everyone in the health care field should have to read, and everyone else will want to."—Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist
Eating is the most pleasurable, gross, necessary, unspeakable
biological process we undertake. But very few of us realise what
strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal
- let alone have pondered the results (of the research). How have
physicists made crisps crispier? What do laundry detergent and
saliva have in common? Was self-styled 'nutritional economist'
Horace Fletcher right to persuade millions of people that chewing a
bite of shallot seven hundred times would yield double the
vitamins? In her trademark, laugh-out-loud style, Mary Roach breaks
bread with spit connoisseurs, beer and pet-food tasters, stomach
slugs, potato crisp engineers, enema exorcists, rectum-examining
prison guards, competitive hot dog eaters, Elvis' doctor, and many
more as she investigates the beginning, and the end, of our food.
Does the light just go out and that's that - the million-year nap?
Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will
that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in
my laptop?" Mary Roach trains her considerable humour and curiosity
on the human soul, seeking answers from a varied and fascinating
crew of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists,
schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove)
that life goes on after we die. Along the way she encounters
electromagnetic hauntings, out-of-body experiences, ghosts and
lawsuits: Mary Roach sifts and weighs the evidence in her
hilarious, inimitable style.
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