Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2013: Mary Roach s investigations into weird body science were inspired by a plastic torso with removable organs in her fifth-grade class, the point at which curiosity began to push aside disgust or fear or whatever it is that so reliably deflects mind from body. Since then, she s investigated death (Stiff), sex (Bonk), life after death (Spooked), and life in zero-gravity (Packing for Mars). Now, she cruises down the alimentary canal with Gulp. As you d expect with Roach, this isn t a methodical top-to-bottom tour. It s more delightful and memorable than that. She s a gorgeous writer, a master of sly asides, puns, and the bizarre but ultimately relevant story, sounding at times like an absurdly well-informed comedian (her footnotes are must-reads). And her evocative portraits of experts obsessed with their piece of the digestive puzzle--the surprising properties of saliva, nuances of chewing and digesting, and, yes, the incredible control of the colon--coaxes her readers beyond the gag reflex, inspiring awe for the world inside ourselves. --Mari Malcolm