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“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 in Gulp 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? In Gulp 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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I quite enjoyed listening to this audio book. Occasionally the journalistic style was distracting for me (was physical description of each person she interviewed, including the clothing, necessary?) but I liked the humor thrown in. The narrator Emily Woo Zeller was fantastic, I loved her voice and accents and everything about it.
I thought the amount of detail and research put in to each topic was well balanced, and though there were a few chapters that I felt didn't really fit with the rest of the book, as a whole it was cohesive and had good flow.
Though at first I didn't think this book had made a particular mark on me, I found myself gushing about it to multiple people and constantly quoting it.
Will definitely be looking for more of Mary Roach in the future!