STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES of HUMAN CADAVERS by Mary Roach








Published by Tantor Audio in 2004
Read by Shelly Frasier
Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes
Unabridged


One fact about life on this planet - we are all going to die. Mary Roach takes a look at what happens once we're dead in Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers and asks what happens next? She's not exploring the afterlife - she is looking, literally, at what happens to our bodies when we "shuffle off this mortal coil."

Roach explores what happens when you donate your body to science - everything from a medical school to a once-living crash test dummy. Or, you can donate your body to a mortuary school so prospective morticians can practice their future craft.

Maybe you don't want to donate your entire body. What happens if you just donate some of your organs?

What if you are not donating anything. What happens when you have a traditional funeral? How about if you are cremated? There are new ways to dispose of a body as well, including one that pretty much cooks the meat off of your bones and one that breaks you up and then mulches you into the earth.


This was a fascinating, entertaining, informative and often very funny book. Let's face it - being dead is sort of ridiculous. The reader, Shelly Frasier, is a natural. She read it so perfectly, with such an ironic tone, that I honestly thought that the author had read the book until I wrote this review. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES of HUMAN CADAVERS by Mary Roach.

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