Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."―Entertainment Weekly

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious 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. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
• Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
• Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
• From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
• Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales
• The American Way of Death Revisited
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void