This was my first encounter with Mary Roach, author of a long string of popular science books that aim to entertain as much as inform. I had an odd feeling as I read the book, reflecting on how my own first drafts often include painful puns, strained wordplay, tasteless jokes and mostly irrelevant but amusing side comments -- and if I don't edit them in the next draft out my most ruthless editor (my spouse) crosses them through with a thick ink marker. Roach just leaves them all in. Her science credentials are impressive, however, and each chapter is supported by an extensive list of sources. What she undertakes here is to ask all the embarrassing questions that may have crossed our minds but we didn't dare ask our physician, let alone our high school science teacher, about what happens to our food between the entryway and the exit door. Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? Can constipation kill you -- did it kill Elvis? Why do we ignore or trash-talk our anus when it is one of the most versatile and important organs of the body? And so and so on. Without the recommendation of a member of my Green Valley book club I would never have picked up this book. Now I've gone on to read another in the same vein (Bonk, an exhaustive and no-holds-barred study of human sexuality and the scientists who have studied it.)
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