Mary Roach Bücher

Auf die ihnen eigene diskrete Weise leisten Leichen seit Jahrhunderten einen wichtigen Beitrag zu Forschung und Wissenschaft. Sie helfen dabei. Autos sicherer zu machen und stellen sich als Anschauungsobjekte für angehende Ärzte zur Verfügung. Sie geben Gerichtsmedizinern und Kriminalbeamten wichtige Hinweise. Ohne sie wären zahllose Morde und Verbrechen nie aufgeklärt worden. Die Wissenschaftsjournalisten Mary Roach recherchierte in der wunderbaren Welt der Leichen: hier berichtet sie aus Anatomiesälen, Laboratorien und Krematorien über das abwechslungsreiche Leben nach dem Tod.

Neues von der Meisterin der komischen NaturwissenschaftenWir riechen und schlürfen, schmecken, kauen, schlucken. Und dann? Was passiert mit Müsli, Steak, Salat und Cola, wenn sie im Schlund verschwunden sind? Mary Roach, die Spezialistin für das ungewöhnliche in den Naturwissenschaften, nimmt uns mit auf eine höchst unterhaltsame Reise durch den Verdauungsapparat – vom Mund bis zum After –, die keine Frage auslässt: Warum mögen wir so gern Knuspriges? Warum verdaut der Magen sich nicht selbst? Wie viel kann man essen, bevor der Magen platzt? Kann uns eine Verstopfung umbringen? (Und ist Elvis Presley vielleicht daran gestorben?) Mary Roach trifft Wissenschaftler, die sich furchtlos mit eher anrüchigen Themen befassen, besucht ein Tierfuttertestlabor, schaut dem Magen bei der Arbeit zu und untersucht den Darm als potentielles Versteck. Urkomisch und informativ.

Mary Roach beleuchtet in „Houston, wir haben einen Pilz!“ das Leben von Astronauten in der Schwerelosigkeit. Sie behandelt Themen wie Enge, Ernährung, Hygiene und Privatsphäre im All und wirft einen humorvollen Blick auf die menschlichen Erfahrungen in der Raumfahrt. Ein faszinierendes und menschliches Porträt.

An oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.

What happens to your body after you have died? Fertilizer? Crash Test Dummy? Human Dumpling? Ballistics Practise?Life after death is not as simple as it looks. Mary Roach's Stiff lifts the lid off what happens to our bodies once we have died. Bold, original and with a delightful eye for detail, Roach tells us everything we wanted to know about this new frontier in medical science. Interweaving present-day explorations with a history of past attempts to study what it means to be human Stiff is a deliciously dark investigations for readers of popular science as well as fans of the macabre

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2014In her fantastically disgusting international bestseller, Mary Roach dives into the strange wet miracles of science that operate inside us after every meal

Space is devoid of the stuff humans need to live: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh veg, privacy, beer. How much can a person give up? What happens when you can't walk for a year? Is sex any fun in zero gravity? As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to explore space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a 17,000-mile-per-hour crash test of NASA's space capsule, she takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of living in space.

This book is an exploration of human digestion. Few of us realize what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal. In her trademark style, the author investigates the beginning, and end, of our food, addressing such questions as: why crunchy food is so appealing, why it is hard to find words for flavors and smells, why the stomach doesn't digest itself, how much we can eat before our stomachs burst, and whether constipation killed Elvis. Here 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

A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) 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 visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again.

Mention it and most of us think of history, of conflicts on foreign soil, of heroism and compromise, of strategy and weapons. But there's a whole other side to the gruesome business of the battlefield. In Grunt, the inimitable Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war.Setting about her task with infectious enthusiasm, she sniffs World War II stink bombs, tests earplugs in a simulated war zone and burns the midnight oil with the crew of a nuclear submarine. Speaking to the scientists and the soldiers, she learns about everything from life-changing medical procedures to innovations as esoteric as firing dead chickens at fighter jets. Engrossing, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, this is an irresistible ride to the wilder shores of modern military life.