Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina? Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International. Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.

About the Author :
Mary Roach is the author of seven best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in California.

Review :
"Replaceable You by turns surprises and delights, revealing information that even I didn’t know…These curious facts, with attendant and laugh-inducing footnotes, keep us turning the pages, but the real power of the book lies in its humanity." "Readers will feel awe at all the body can do and how it is made, as well as admiration for humanity’s per­sistence in exploring its limits—whether when confronted with a malfunctioning organ or the desire for a more plump derriere. Replaceable You will delight Roach’s fans and surely garner some more." "Since she burst onto the scene with 2003’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, the science writer Mary Roach has been grossing readers out with curiosity, humanity — and alarming gusto. And we can’t look away." "We are all replaceable to some degree or another . . . with the exception of Mary Roach. There is no one and nothing like her—singular, bizarre, dedicated, passionate, fascinating. Her writing traffics at the unusual intersection of science, storytelling, and humor. That is a very tricky intersection to navigate, and no one does it as masterfully or consistently as she. I devour everything she writes." "Mary Roach has had a more direct impact on my career than any other writer. She is her own genre of book—gonzo, hilarious, wildly educational. This is Roach at her finest." "In her brilliant (and brilliantly funny book) Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the puzzle of the human body, the way we can assemble and reassemble the very human pieces into different versions of who we are and how we work. The result is intriguing, compassionate, wise and—as with all her books—addictively readable. Or to put this another way: Don't miss it." "An amiably entertaining, endlessly intriguing stroll through the stuff of which we’re made."