I was beginning to worry that Mary Roach had retired from writing; her previous pop-science book was Fuzz, which came out back in 2021. Ah, never fear: she's back, and Portsmouth (NH) Public Library did not even need me to ask them to buy this.
Mary's overall theme here is the history and the current state of the art of (varied) human replacement parts. It's very wide-ranging. She discusses replacement of noses, joints, hair, corneas, skin, … various organ transplants (heart, kidneys, …); from human and non-human donors; altered naughty bits, prosthetics, assisted breathing (via "iron lung"), various ostomies. As kind of a grand finale, she sits in on the (lets be frank) dismemberment of a generous tissue donor.
That "naughty bits" thing goes into what's euphemistically termed "gender affirming care"; although Mary seems supportive, her descriptions sound pretty close to voluntary genital mutilation, and the results seem (um) suboptimal.
Mary writes at a PG-13 level: I noticed a couple occurrences of the F-word, and a few variations of the S-word. (She also mentions realizing that a doctor she considered interviewing was the guy to whom she lost her virginity at a frat party years back, and has a salty observation on his performance back then.)
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
