Stiff

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, 303 pages

Think the usefulness of your body ends when you die? In this now-classic book, Roach examines all they ways in which human dead bodies can be useful, from teaching medical students anatomy and surgery techniques to helping forensic pathologists figure out how and when a person died to making our cars safer. While this book is certainly not for the squeamish (particularly the chapter in which Roach looks into reports of cannibalism *shudder*), it is informative and surprisingly funny. I listened to the audiobook, read by Shelley Frasier, whose wry narration perfectly captures the gallows humor of Roach's writing. I left this book feeling simultaneously better informed, grossed out, slightly guilty (for laughing so hard at a book about dead people), and even more deeply convinced of my decision to leave my body to science.