The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with
a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside.
America's funniest science writer (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch
on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain:
the questions explored inGulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in
Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in
Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find
words for flavors and smells? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much
can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill
Elvis? InGulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of
or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a
fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With
Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists,
Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally),
rabbis and terrorists who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal
bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach's books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about
human bodies.
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