My favorite books to friend your body’s marvelous machines

Although skin is highly visible and a good indicator of health, habits, and age, its complexity and significance for overall health are often overlooked. Dermatologist, historian, and world traveler, Lyman demystifies the body’s largest organ.

He explains commonly encountered conditions such as blushing, goosebumps, and itching. With engaging stories, Lyman also informs about rarely encountered conditions, past and present, that illustrate the amazing capacity of the skin to fend off infection, dehydration, and other perils of the outside world as well as assaults from within.

Additionally, skin is rich with social and psychological significance. You will be compelled to take better care of your body’s wrapping having read the book. 

Now turning to the human body, Bryson continues his long tradition of combining loads of engaging, thoroughly researched information with ironic humor.

He dissects his subject system by system, starting with the normal structure and function of the skin and eventually moving to the “nether regions.” He follows with chapters on what can go wrong and what can go very wrong. Whereas other books focus on single systems, e.g., skeleton or gut, The Body is broader in its scope but understandably not so thorough.

For a single book to heighten a reader’s marvel and understanding of the human workings, this is the one.  

Since zoologist Bill Schutt previously wrote the very popular Cannibalism, A Perfectly Natural History, you might expect that his more recent expose of the heart would be equally wide-ranging, engaging, and touched with macabre. It is.

With clarity and wit, Schutt describes circulation from worms to bats to whales along with the curious adaptations that explain why frog hearts can freeze solid and resume function and why the blood of horseshoe crabs is favored by researchers. Schutt not only describes this living pump across the animal kingdom but also through time as philosophers and scientists have pondered, and eventually discovered, its true function.

If you have an interest in biology, history of science, or your own inner workings, Pump will make your heart throb.

Should bookstores shelve Gulp in the Humor section or the Science section? Both.

With her usual comedic and eclectic approach to her subject, Roach ranges and rages through our digestive system end to end. She mixes plenty of real science with quirky and unexpected diversions headlined by chapter titles such as "Dead Man’s Bloat and Other Tales from the History of Flatulence Research"; "Up Theirs, The Alimentary Canal as Criminal Accomplice"; and "Stuffed, The Science of Eating Yourself to Death".

It’s informative. It’s fun. Worthy of digestion.

Any author who voluntarily has his nose packed and totally obstructed for over a week attracts my awe as one who is committed to walking the walk of his subject.

Nestor’s descriptions of this experience and the immense joy he encounters when his nasal airways were unblocked and his sense of smell restored sets the stage for an engaging tour through the science and art of a vital bodily function that we mostly ignore—respiration.

He posits that humans have been ignoring breath for centuries at our detriment and which accounts for sleep apnea, snoring, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. He poses means of relief. What a fresh breath.