Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers / Mary Roach.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-303).

A head is a terrible thing to waste: practicing surgery on the dead -- Crimes of anatomy: body-snatching and other sordid tales from the dawn of human dissection -- Life after death: on human decay and what can be done about it -- Dead man driving: human crash test dummies and the ghastly, necessary science of impact tolerance -- Beyond the black box: when the bodies of the passengers must tell the story of a crash -- The cadaver who joined the army: the sticky ethics of bullets and bombs -- Holy cadaver: the crucifixion experiments -- How to know if you're dead: beating-heart cadavers, live burial, and the scientific search for the soul -- Just a head: decapitation, reanimation, and the human head transplant -- Eat me: medicinal cannibalism and the case of the human dumplings -- Out of the fire, into the compost bin: and other new ways to end up -- Remains of the author: will she or won't she?

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.