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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
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.
Mary Roach's website
This bio was last updated on 10/03/2025. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
What got you interested in the "lives" of human cadavers in
the first place?
One day I was talking to a man who designs crash test dummies. He told me
that actual humans--both living and dead--have also been used by automotive
safety researchers. He explained that you not only need to know how much
force an impact is unleashing on a body (dummies tell you that); you also
need to know what kind of damage that much force will cause to an actual
body. And for anything other than very minor impacts, you would want that
body to be dead.
Anyway, I began to realize there's this whole work force of donated
cadavers out there, being put through their paces in labs and
universities. Like any new and foreign world, it was fascinating to me and
I wanted to know more.
What was the creepiest place you visited during your research?
I visited a lab where plastic surgeons were practicing new techniques. I
remember walking in, and there were these 40 heads, set up in pans on
tabletops, all in a row. Your brain doesn't really know what to do with
this. Mine chose to pretend we were in a rubber mask factory, and these
were just very realistic Halloween items being worked on.
When I began to talk to the...
Dr. Erica Brown is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. She is the author of Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and a ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Stiff
Try:
Happier Endings
by Erica Brown
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to England, where he worked for The Times and The Independent, and wrote for many major British and American publications.
Bill Bryson's bestselling books include A Walk ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
Stiff
Try:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
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