Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A marvelous, organ-by-organ journey through the body eclectic…Irresistible [and] impressive." —John J. Ross, Wall Street Journal
The human body is the most fraught and fascinating, talked-about and taboo, unique yet universal fact of our lives. It is the inspiration for art, the subject of science, and the source of some of the greatest stories ever told. In Anatomies, acclaimed author of Periodic Tales Hugh Aldersey-Williams brings his entertaining blend of science, history, and culture to bear on this richest of subjects.
In an engaging narrative that ranges from ancient body art to plastic surgery today and from head to toe, Aldersey-Williams explores the corporeal mysteries that make us human: Why are some people left-handed and some blue-eyed? What is the funny bone, anyway? Why do some cultures think of the heart as the seat of our souls and passions, while others place it in the liver?
A journalist with a knack for telling a story, Aldersey-Williams takes part in a drawing class, attends the dissection of a human body, and visits the doctor’s office and the morgue. But Anatomies draws not just on medical science and Aldersey-Williams’s reporting. It draws also on the works of philosophers, writers, and artists from throughout history. Aldersey-Williams delves into our shared cultural heritage—Shakespeare to Frankenstein, Rembrandt to 2001: A Space Odyssey—to reveal how attitudes toward the human body are as varied as human history, as he explains the origins and legacy of tattooing, shrunken heads, bloodletting, fingerprinting, X-rays, and more.
From Adam’s rib to van Gogh’s ear to Einstein’s brain, Anatomies is a treasure trove of surprising facts and stories and a wonderful embodiment of what Aristotle wrote more than two millennia ago: "The human body is more than the sum of its parts."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mixing biology, art, literature, and pop culture from the ancient past up to the present, Aldersey-Williams (The Most Perfect Molecule) provides an enlightening and thoroughly engaging view of the human body. Although he divides the corpus into part-specific chapters, Aldersey-Williams avoids a reductionist view of the subject, reflecting instead on how our components come together to make us fully human. Along the way he relates myriad humorous, informative, and provocative stories in the chapter on flesh, he describes the "autocannibalism" of food critic Stefan Gates, who "converted fat extracted from his body by liposuction into glycerol for use in icing a cake, which he then proceeded to eat." He also apprises readers of how to make a shrunken head, and describes "a new kind of love token" being pioneered by artist Tobie Kerridge: "rings made from the bone tissue of their partner." He also explains why it's not uncommon to find subjects with two left feet in paintings, the science behind facial recognition, and the skeletal demands of ballet. From the dissection laboratory to a live-model drawing class, Aldersey-Williams illuminates the contours of the human body from head to toe. 16 illus.
