THE BODY
By
Anthony Smith approaches The Body with the conception that ""man is just another bit of biology,"" not an isolated being; he has concentrated on function over breakdown. ""People, like every other living thing, are to survive, to change, to reproduce,"" and he feels reproduction deserves most emphasis. Consequently he proceeds with a certain deliberateness to deliver the facts of life, basic and otherwise--interjected among the usual knowns are such items as: homosexuals have more brothers than average; fifty per cent of the population if taken by the criterion of productivity are ""genetically unfit""; the bigger the breasts, the smaller the I.Q. . . . ? . . . The author also covers birth and development, decay and death, the organs, the senses, nutrition, sleep, and concludes with a discussion of radiation and a glossary for the nuclear age. The Body, beautiful or otherwise, has a consistent fascination which this book capitalizes on to secure a popular rather than a scientific response.