(Norton, $27)
Mary Roach “takes us to places we don’t want to go—and then makes us glad we went,” said Daniel Dyer in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Never has this been truer of the witty, fearless science writer than in her latest work—a tour through the stretchy and sloshy recesses of our digestive system that jollies readers all the way from “teeth to tush.” However refined any particular culinary experience may be, she reminds us, the end product is the same material that repels people the world over. And yet the production of excrement is as vital to our bodily functions as food. “Reading her new book, you will simultaneously suppress a gag and gulp with gratitude.”
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“Gulp is a big leap forward for Roach,” said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. Her monosyllabically titled books have all manifested a love for strange science: Stiff examined corpses; Bonk surveyed contemporary sex research. But this latest proves to be “far and away her funniest and most sparkling book” because it contains no gimmickry: By simply thinking about the body and interviewing “the most oddball experts she can find,” she easily holds our interest. In the author’s cheery discussion of rectal smuggling among prison visitors, for example, she finds that this transport mode doesn’t stop at drugs: One inmate earned the nickname “Office Depot” for once packing his rectum with three binder rings, a pencil sharpener, and two boxes of staples. “Who but Mary Roach would know how to digest that information?”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”