A compelling and compassionate exploration of the death industry and the people—embalmers, detectives, crime scene cleaners, executioners—who work in it and what led them there. Embarking on a three-year trip across the US and the UK, journalist Hayley Campbell—inspired by her longtime fascination with death, thanks to a childhood surrounded by her father’s Jack the Ripper cartoons—met with a variety of professionals in the death industry to see how they work. Along the way, Campbell … Continue reading All the Living and the Dead →

An extraordinary debut in the tradition of classic works from authors such as Mark Kurlansky, Mary Roach, and Rose George. An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals about class, race, power, and identity. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or … Continue reading The Address Book →

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

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 … Continue reading Grunt →