Much of Mary Roach’s body of work is made up of works about the body. She has demystified the nitty-gritty of what it means to be human in such bestsellers as Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. In her latest work, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (Norton, September 16), she examines a world of underperforming body parts—and their possible replacements. Our starred review calls it “an amiably entertaining, endlessly intriguing stroll through the stuff of which we’re made.” Roach answered our questions by email.

Tell readers about your book.

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3-D printers. Replaceable You explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than with their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever?

What inspired you during the writing?

Excellent nonfiction always spurs me to try harder, be better. To that end, I read Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. Reading that book is like being beside him in that shitty, fume-reeking car day by day, for weeks, all over Siberia. Does that sound awful? You don't know Ian Frazier. I marvel at the details he notices and the characters he gathers and the way he puts them on the page and mixes all that with reporting and history. This is the kind of nonfiction I aspire to: a unique voice mixed with enthusiastic reporting.

Where and when did you write?

I wrote this one in my office, surrounded by miscellany from reporting trips: a package of bite-size dinner rolls for cosmonauts, a vaginal weightlifting device called the Feminine Personal Trainer, a mortuary eyelid cap, some medical maggots preserved in alcohol, a bendable penile implant, and a thimble-size Styrofoam cup, shrunk by the water pressure at the bottom of Antarctica’s Palmer Deep. The only necessity is good espresso. 

What was most challenging about writing the book?

My chapters—unless they’re historical—like to be set in a place, with people doing things, having conversations, creating narrative for me. For this book, that was more challenging than usual. I needed access to places that have become ever more closed off: university labs, hospital operating rooms, biotech firms. I spent a lot of time writing emails to people who didn’t write back or passed me on to the no-sayers: legal staff and PR professionals. This meant having to call in favors, be persistent, go to another country, whatever it took. All part of the job.

Any book tour events you are especially looking forward to?

I'll be going back to some places I have very much enjoyed: Town Hall Seattle, Science on Tap (Portland, Oregon), and the National Writers Series (Traverse City, Michigan).

What fall release(s) are you most eager to get your hands on?

One of Us, by Dan Chaon. Apparently set in an early-20th-century carnival. Also looking forward to Susan Orlean’s memoir, Joyride. I look forward to anything by her.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.