it constitutes 10 percent of all our genetic material. No one has any idea why. The mysterious part was for a while called junk DNA but now is more graciously called dark DNA, meaning that we don’t know what it does or why it is there.

For many, the stammering miraculously ceases when they sing their words, speak in a foreign language or talk to themselves. The majority of speakers recover from the condition by their teenage years and females seem to recover more easily than men . Middle-aged Americans are twice as likely to die prematurely than those in Sweden, France, Germany, and the UK. A more scientific, and more recent, U.S. National Health and Social Life Survey found that 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men said they had been unfaithful at some time. The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner. It has no pain receptors, literally no feelings. It has never felt warm sunshine or a soft breeze. To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like taps of Morse code. And out of this bare and neutral information it creates for you—quite literally creates—a vibrant, three-dimensional, sensually engaging universe. Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding.” The book is full of facts, it must be a dream for someone who goes to quizzes a lot, although there are some interesting ones as well. Bryson estimates that austerity in Britain has led to about 120 000 preventable deaths. He attributes the fact that Americans die at a younger age the Europeans to lifestyle. Bryson also takes a more global perspective and looks at the battle with infectious diseases and our overuse of antibiotics which has led to antibiotic resistant bugs. Bryson takes a look at the opioid crisis and at some of the medical techniques that did not stand the test of time; lobotomy for example.

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We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.' With these two things in mind, proceed at your own risk! If you love trivia and don’t mind dumbed down science, this should be perfect for you. If you are a doctor, it may be too simple of an explanation to satisfy – or, maybe not??? If you are easily queasy when it comes to blood, vomit, and other bodily fluids and functions, I would suggest passing on this one.

While reading, I imagined Alton Brown reading the text in the same manner he talks to the audience in Good Eats. Bill Nye would be a great narrator, too!According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the amount of vegetables eaten by the average American between 2000 and 2010 dropped by thirty pounds. That seems an alarming decline until you realize that the most popular vegetable in America by a very wide margin is the French fry. (It accounts for a quarter of our entire vegetable intake.) These days, eating thirty pounds less “vegetables” may well be a sign of an improved diet. A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything , this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. The truth is, it's just not clear who The Body is for. Is it the sort of book targeted to the children bored by textbooks, or is it targeted to the casual adult reader? Is it meant for people who care for and know about the human body, or is it for people who know nothing about it? It is a strange burden to put on a writer to expect an entirely different book than the one that is present, but for many long-time Bryson fans, this may be exactly the conundrum.

Book Genre: Biology, Health, History, Humor, Medical, Medicine, Nonfiction, Popular Science, Science It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' Daily Telegraph Have you ever find your school biology textbook, well, literally, funny? Some might say they find it "interesting", but funny? Nah, I don't think anyone would come forward raising his/her hand, giggling and telling how funny their biology book was. Now the good news is: Bill Bryson has come up with one. And in this book, Bryson is absolutely at his best. The bottom line is that we ended up with brains big enough to handle complex thoughts and vocal tracts uniquely able to articulate them." Smell is said to account for at least 70 per cent of flavour and maybe even as much as 90 per cent.Later Add: Dr Abigail Zuger, who writes for The New York Times says that the book has several errors. The medical profession has produced absolute heroes who invented solutions (i.e. vaccines & therapies) that mitigate a staggering amount of suffering.