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Replaceable You
Adventures in Human Anatomy
Brief Description
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye...
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Replaceable You
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An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A BEST BOOK OF 2025: TIME - SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - KiRKUS - CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY
A Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee
From the New York Times best-selling author of Stiff and Fuzz, a rollicking exploration of the quest to re-create the impossible complexities of human anatomy.
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Description
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet?
In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina?
Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International.
Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781324050629
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 16 September 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Illustration: 17 illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 28.0mm
Width: 150.0mm
Height: 218.0mm
Weight: 377g
Pages: 288
Collections
About the Author
Mary Roach is the author of eight best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in California.
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