You can be replaced

In the coming weeks I plan to get a new crown on one of my teeth and to have cataract surgery on both eyes. In other words, I will be replacing some of my original equipment with artificial replacement parts.

And this is the subject of Mary Roach's entertaining new book Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025). As usual in her books, she makes science fun. You may not think there is anything amusing about hip replacements, artificial hearts, breast implants, mechanical joints and the like, but Roach can bring a smile while writing about just about anything.

When she is visiting a place where bodies are carved up to retrieve donated organs,  she comments about the music played in the building — Wanted Dead or Alive, Another One Bites the Dust and Only the Good Die Young, among other songs on the morgue playlist.

She writes about women who change breast implants as often as they change boyfriends. She tells of gene-edited pigs so that individuals who may eventually need new organs can have their "personal pig" when the time comes. She writes, "Hip replacement has the visual drama of a visit to a Chevron station."

Even her footnotes are worth reading. In one she reveals how she lost her virginity. That's not something one expects to find in a science book.

Roach doesn't appear to be squeamish about anything, allowing her to view and then describe things most of us might wish to avoid. And her humor makes all this easier for the reader to handle.