Gulp

Eating is the most pleasurable, gross, necessary, unspeakable biological process we humans undertake. But very few of us realise what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal. In her trademark style, Mary Roach breaks bread with spit connoisseurs and enema exorcists, stomach slugs, rectum-examining prison guards, and competitive hot dog eaters (how much can you eat before your guts burst?)- as she investigates the beginning, and end, of our food. 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