Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy

By Mary Roach

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1324050624
• ISBN13: 9781324050629
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent nonfiction!

A history and more of the developments in medical/surgical history of replacing absent or nonfunctional parts. Some of the chapters are: Noses (much needed WW1), skin (grafts not only for burns), finger microsurgery, from Iron Lung to ventilator, eyes (from contacts to prostheses), implants, an assortment of limb prostheses, and more. She documents interviews and observing with surgeons all over the world with humor and respect. Another excellent offering from this author! I requested and received a temporary uncorrected digital galley from W. W. Norton & Company via NetGalley. Pub Date Sep 16, 2025 ***** #review #bookbub @goodreads #storygraph #librarything #ReplaceableYou by @authormaryroach @w.w.norton #Nonfiction #Science #Medical #Health #Humor #Biology #Adult #Medicine #History #surgicaladvances #ScienceNature #humananatomy #meticulousresearch #duediligence