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.
Book Reviews
Library Journal
Despite the irreverent, macabre title, this is a respectful and serious examination of what happens to cadavers, past and present.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Roach…has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty….Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice…. impossible to put down.
Outside
Mordantly witty
The Denver Post
Squeamish readers beware! But for the rest, this is an outrageously funny, irreverent (but respectful) account of what happens to the human body after a person has died, and that's far more involved than simple burial or cremation.
New City Chicago
Roach's deliberate carefulness diminishes the topic's gore and sets a comfortable, comic tone that finds solace in its own oddity. Certain sections of the book are nothing short of mesmerizing, namely the portions dedicated to the University of Tennessee's body farm, and the analysis of remains after plane crashes. By and large, the dead aren't very talented, Roach writes. They may not be talented, but in Stiff, they sure are fun.
Baltimore City Paper
What's so funny about being dead? Nothing, of course, if it's Grandmother. But those who work with dead bodies frequently, such as the detectives in Homicide, tend to adopt a gallows humor. Mary Roach, who saw her share of corpses by the time she was done researching Stiff, has learned how to cut the tension with a good joke. It turns out that Stiff is one of the funniest, best-written, most thoroughly researched books of the year--a constant pleasure, even when Roach is describing, in graphic detail, exploratory surgery on a cadaver.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Roach has done her homework so we don't have to. Her book's a winner.
The Chicago Sun-Times
One does not skim this book. Every detail is riveting. It is impossible to tear one's eyes away from Roach's description of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, where at a body farm--a bucolic meadow--scores of donated cadavers decompose noisomely outdoors so that forensic scientists can better learn to sniff out clues from the bodies of murder victims.
Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice selection)
Because she always draws a distinction between you and your smelly carcass (not the same person, she argues), Roach gets away with the cheerfully morbid smart-ass commentary that abounds throughout. She's written one of the funniest and most unusual books of the year.
Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
Droll, dark, and quite wise, Stiff makes being dead funny and fascinating and weirdly appealling.
Joe Queenan, author of Balsamic Dreams
Mary Roach proves what many of us have long suspected that the real fun in life doesn't start until you're dead. I particularly enjoyed the sections about head transplants, black-market mummies, and how to tell if you're actually dead.
Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist
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.
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Stiff
Library Journal
Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
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