Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2013: Mary Roach’s investigations into weird body science were inspired by a plastic torso with removable organs in her fifth-grade class, “the point at which curiosity began to push aside disgust or fear or whatever it is that so reliably deflects mind from body.” Since then, she’s investigated death (Stiff), sex (Bonk), life after death (Spooked), and life in zero-gravity (Packing for Mars). Now, she cruises down the alimentary canal with Gulp. As you’d expect with Roach, this isn’t a methodical top-to-bottom tour. It’s more delightful and memorable than that. She’s a gorgeous writer, a master of sly asides, puns, and the bizarre but ultimately relevant story, sounding at times like an absurdly well-informed comedian (her footnotes are must-reads). And her evocative portraits of experts obsessed with their piece of the digestive puzzle—the surprising properties of saliva, nuances of chewing and digesting, and, yes, the incredible control of the colon—coaxes her readers beyond the gag reflex, inspiring awe for the world inside ourselves.

—Mari Malcolm

“Fans of lively writing will be delighted by the newest monosyllable from Mary Roach. Once again Roach boldly goes where no author has gone before, into the sciences of the taboo, the macabre, the icky, and the just plain weird. And she conveys it all with a perfect touch: warm, lucid, wry, sharing the unavoidable amusement without ever resorting to the cheap or the obvious. Yum!”

(Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works and The Better Angels of Our Nature)

“Mary Roach put her hand in a cow’s stomach for you, dear reader. If you don't read Gulp, then that was all for nought. Plus, you'll miss out on the funniest book ever written about guts.”

(Carl Zimmer, author of Evolution: Making Sense of Life and Parasite Rex)

“As probing as an endoscopy, Gulp is quintessential Mary Roach: supremely wide-ranging, endlessly curious, always surprising, and, yes, gut-wrenchingly funny.”

(Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us))

“Starred review. Roach’s approach is grounded in science, but the virtuosic author rarely resists a pun, and it’s clear she revels in giving readers a thrill—even if it is a queasy one. Adventurous kids and doctors alike will appreciate this fascinating and sometimes ghastly tour of the gastrointestinal system.”

(Publishers Weekly)

“Starred Review. For all her irreverence, Roach marvels over the fine-tuned workings and ‘wisdom’ of the human body, and readers will delight in her exuberant energy, audacity, and wit.”

(Booklist)

“Starred review. Filled with witty asides, humorous anecdotes, and bizarre facts, this book will entertain readers, challenge their cultural taboos, and simultaneously teach them new lessons in digestive biology.”

(Library Journal)