EARTHLY MATERIALS

Cheerful accounts of the human organism.

Like all animals, humans extract energy from their surroundings. We consume other forms of life and sometimes mix it with inorganic matter (i.e., water, oxygen), convert it into a useful product, and usually return it or its residue back into the environment. Journalist Wood, author of Love and Death in the Sunshine State, delivers a dozen idiosyncratic essays on these physiological elements from the fundamental (blood, milk, breath, tears) to the noisome (feces, urine, vomit). When he writes as a journalist, interviews researchers, and often becomes a subject of their studies, the result is popular science (mucus, hair), history (urine—an obsession of alchemists and physicians; traditional beliefs about menses are beyond bizarre), or racial politics (blood) mixed with a sprinkling of diversionary anecdotes. In many cases, the anecdotes swamp the educational material, but readers will share the author’s fascination. The milk chapter features a mother caught up in a massive scheme to sell stolen infant formula, and the one on semen mostly recounts masturbation and internet pornography. Vomit is taken up with the author’s experience at a New Age religious ceremony in which participants consume a psychedelic known to cause violent emesis; Cutter is largely spared and has a wonderful time, but this is not the case with his companions. Elsewhere, he provides more than many readers will want to know about adolescent approaches to flatulence. Bill Bryson’s The Body was the best popular work on human physiology. Mary Roach’s books contain the most jokes. Wood has written perhaps the most quirky, but it’s a subject with a universal appeal, so no matter how far he wanders, readers will likely follow.

A highly personal examination of the highly personal.