Books with author MARY ROACH

Space is devoid of the stuff humans need to live: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh veg, privacy, beer. How much can a person give up? What happens when you can't walk? Is sex any fun? What's it like being with a few people for months at a time? From the space shuttle training toilet to a 17,000 mile-per-hour crash test of NASA's space capsule, Mary Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space.

THE PRODIGY have sold 25 million records and single-handedly reinvented the crossover between dance and rock music, with legendary songs such as 'Firestarter', 'Omen' and 'Breathe'. However, long before they became a stadium-filling rock monster, The Prodigy were prowling the underground of the UK rave scene, first as a blistering demo of tunes by the 'prodigious' teenage Liam Howlett, then latterly with their breakthrough masterpiece, Music For The Jilted Generation.Martin Roach was present throughout the band's early years and documented their rise from the underground into the bright lights of music superstardom. Containing hours and hours of exclusive interviews, the book chronicles the band's early years in minute detail, speaking to each band member and all the key players along the way.With a new introduction by Liam Howlett putting this classic early phase in the context of their historically important career, this book is a must-buy for the millions of Prodigy fans eager to learn about the band's formative days.

"Equal parts Groucho Marx and Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening and entertaining."—Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News The best-selling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers now trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul. What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She begins the journey in rural India with a reincarnation researcher and ends up in a University of Virginia operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences. Along the way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario, and visits a Duke University professor with a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves' heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts, and the last surviving sample of "ectoplasm" in a Cambridge University archive. .

"What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die."

For fans of Gut by Giulia Enders Eating is the most pleasurable, gross, necessary, unspeakable biological process we undertake. But very few of us realise what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal – let alone have pondered the results (of the research). How have physicists made crisps crispier? What do laundry detergent and saliva have in common? Was self-styled ‘nutritional economist’ Horace Fletcher right to persuade millions of people that chewing a bite of shallot seven hundred times would yield double the vitamins? In her trademark, laugh-out-loud style, Mary Roach breaks bread with spit connoisseurs, beer and pet-food tasters, stomach slugs, potato crisp engineers, enema exorcists, rectum-examining prison guards, competitive hot dog eaters, Elvis' doctor, and many more as she investigates the beginning, and the end, of our food.

The Prodigy have sold 25 million records and single-handedly reinvented the crossover between dance and rock music, with legendary songs such as 'Firestarter', 'Omen' and 'Breathe'. However, long before they became a stadium-filling rock monster, The Prodigy were prowling the underground of the UK rave scene, first as a blistering demo of tunes by the 'prodigious' teenage Liam Howlett, then latterly with their breakthrough masterpiece, Music for the Jilter Generation. Martin Roach was present throughout the band's early years and documented their rise to fame from the underground into the bright lights of music superstardom. Containing hours and hours of exclusive interviews, the book chronicles the band's early years in minute detail, speaking the each band member and all the key playes along the way. With a new introduction and fresh interview with band members putting these classic early phase in the context of their historically important career, this book is a must-buy for the millions for Prodigy fans eager to learn about the band's formative days.