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The Curious Science of Humans at War
by Mary Roach
Best-selling author Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war.
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.
"Starred Review. Roach applies her thorough - and thoroughly entertaining - techniques to the sobering subject of keeping soldiers not just alive but alert and healthy of mind and body during warfare." - Library Journal
"Roach's book is not for the squeamish or those who envision war as a glorious enterprise; it is a captivating look at the lengths scientists go to in order to reduce the horrors of war." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A rare literary bird, a best selling science writer...Roach avidly and impishly infiltrates the world of military science...Roach is exuberantly and imaginatively informative and irreverently funny, but she is also in awe of the accomplished and committed military people she meets." - Booklist
"Battlefield R&D is a topic too fascinating to ruin, so readers who can tolerate the author's relentless flippancy will not regret the experience." - Kirkus
"Mary Roach is one of the best in the business of science writing...She takes readers on a tour of the scientists who attempt to conquer the panic, exhaustion, heat, and noise that plague modern soldiers." - Brooklyn Magazine
"Roach...applies her tenacious reporting and quirky point of view to efforts by scientists to conquer some of the soldier's worst enemies." - Seattle Times
This information about Grunt was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: John Madere
Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Gulp, Grunt, Fuzz, and Packing for Mars. Her new book, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, debuted in September 2025. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most Watched list. She has been a guest editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing, a finalist for the Royal Society's Winton Prize, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' journalism award, in a category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant.
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