Replaceable You by Mary Roach

 

Mary Roach has been writing oddly specific pop-science books for more than two decades, now, and while the books are about different things, and they're individually written with some care and passion, she does have ... if not exactly a formula, then at least an established approach. It works. Here, she writes about attempts to replace parts of the human body, not so much what we might think of as more conventional transplants (organ and other) from other people as mechanical replacements or transplants from other species; turns out that the other species is probably porcine. The prose has the typical Mary Roach sparkle and wit and breezy flow, and this is a fine read. I'm not sure it's as revelatory as some of her others--especially *Stiff*, most people really don't like to think about what happens to corpses--but there's plenty of information in here, she did her research and she spoke to a lot of people, as usual. Worth reading if you're interested, or if you like Mary Roach's other books.