The irresistible, ever-curious, and always bestselling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure into the invisible realm that people carry around inside. America’s funniest science writer takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour.

The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars.

Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp, we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask.

We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.

Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.

The Double Helix is a riveting account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the molecule of life. This groundbreaking work by Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized the field of biochemistry.

At just 24 years old, Watson was a young scientist eager to make his mark. His candid narrative of the thrilling race against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries offers a dazzlingly clear picture of a world filled with brilliant scientists, human ambitions, and intense rivalries.

Watson's humility, untainted by false modesty, shines through as he recounts his and Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences—the identification of the basic building block of life. Never before has a scientist been so truthful in capturing the essence of his work.