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Published Jun 2016
288 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
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
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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 six New York Times bestsellers, including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. Her book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, was released in September 2021. Mary's books have been published in 21 languages, and her second book, Spook, was a New York Times Notable Book. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, and the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, among others. She was a guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing series and an Osher Fellow with the San Francisco Exploratorium and serves as an advisor for Orion and Undark magazines. She has been a finalist for the Royal Society's Winton Prize and a ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Mary Roach's Website
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