mary roach grunt the curious science of humans at war

The minutiae of her findings accrue in a discomforting way, revealing the many desperate experiments undertaken to minimize the murderousness of IEDs (Improvised Roadside Explosives) or, failing that, to create the means for reattaching a soldier’s vitals, right down to his penis, after an IED has been detonated. Roach embeds herself in myriad obscure and unsung military research laboratories and think tanks. Which lends it greater power and immediacy, albeit sporadically.Īt its best - which is to say, for roughly the book’s first half - Grunt explores the seemingly mundane particulars of how uniform fabrics are chosen and tested (particularly for their flammability), how desert heat is handled, and how vehicles are built to endure the worst that our terrorist wars can throw at them. The subtitle is something of a misnomer Grunt is much more about the science of Americans at war today than anything more far-reaching. The book is a relentless exploration of the manifold physical misfortunes suffered by members of the armed forces in action, and the efforts by scientists to blunt them. In this regard, Grunt ranks high in the Roach repertoire. Her curiosity about the inner workings of things that most of us would rather not inspect too closely often yields revelations and, occasionally, even catharsis. Yet, Roach is rarely gratuitously creepy. Though her books are all relatively brief enterprises, they can feel bottomless in their gross-out depths. ( Gulp, Bonk, Spook and Stiff were her previous efforts about, respectively, the alimentary canal, science and sex, the afterlife, and cadavers.) Roach is a tenacious investigative journalist with an appetite for the unappetizing the best-selling bard of the single-word title. No single soldier has ever endured, in sum, what Mary Roach subjects her readers to in Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (Norton, 285 pp., *** out of four stars).

Mary roach grunt the curious science of humans at war