THE HUMAN BODY

"In writing a book about the human body there is the great advantage that all the readers know what a human body is." Who but Isaac Asimov would begin a serious textbook in such a jovial way? Sketching first the biological order of the evolutionary process until he reaches its apogee, man, he establishes the place of homo sapens in Nature's scheme. Then, limb by limb, organ by organ, occasionally cell by cell, he describes man internally and externally in terms of his chemical and structural nature. Throughout, technical terminology is followed by an informal phonetic breakdown and etymological identification. By contrasting man's posture with that of various animals, Asimov clearly and explains the origin of various aches, pains, and susceptibilities such as slipped lines, fallen and attributing these to the difference between bipedality and . Impacted wisdom teeth, hiccups and other common afflictions are also explained. There is an unusually lucid and sympathetic discussion of the circumstances of human procreation. Asimov is now working on a companion volume on the brain, nervous system, and sensory organs, treated only in passing here. This widely-read science fiction author (I Robot, of Steel The Martian Way, and many others), is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine. This is his ninth book on biological subjects; he also writes on mathematics and philology.