Synopses & Reviews
A JOURNEY DEEP INTO THE MIND. AND THE STOMACH, THE KIDNEYS, THE MUSCLES, THE HEART . . .
You walk, you breathe, you talk, you think. You are the most complex and intelligent organism on the planet. But how does this organism work? And how did you arise from one unique cell? Sara Stein is an award-winning science writer whose research is impeccable and whose writing is gifted. In THE BODY BOOK-crammed with facts, statistics, explanations, and connections-she tells the incredible story of your body.
YOUR BODY INSIDE
· DNA, chromosomes, and genes.
· How one sandwich can feed 40 trillion cells.
· The biggest brain in the world (and thoughts that travel 250 miles per hour).
· Your body's defenses.
· Tonsils, the appendix, and the remnants of a tail.
· How the little bits of iron that color your blood red also flowed through the veins of the dinosaurs.
AND OUT
· How you see, hear, taste, touch, smell.
· The sixth sense
· Your gorilla-hairy body
· Sweat, oil, milk, and tears (which actually "wash away" sadness).
· The skin: the body's largest organ.
· Tans, burns, freckles, and the one gram of pigment difference between blacks and whites
· How you grow into your face
"Sara Stein explains things in ways that kids can relate to and turns science into an adventure," writes the Los Angeles Times. Author of the highly acclaimed The Science Book and award-winning Evolution Book, Sara Stein is the mother of four sons and lives with her husband in New York.
Synopsis
Sara Stein is a science writer with a special gift: to "explain things in ways that kids can relate to and turn science into an adventure" (
Los Angeles Times).
Crammed with facts, statistics, connections, and explanations, The Body Book is the fascinating and dramatic story of who we are, from the perilous journey of sperm to egg-the only human cell visible to the naked eye-to the human brain, product of more than 3 billion years of evolution that began with a bacteria's ability to judge between sweet and sour.
Explaining the digestive system as a molecular disassembly line and the liver as the body's primary environmental protection agency, the book details how all ingredients for life are recycled, how vaccines work, how tears actually "wash away" sadness, why injured areas become warm, and why crash diets fail (they actually hone the body's fat-storing skills). Throughout the book are amazing figures: the 2,000 square feet of surface area from mouth to sphincter, the 500 million cells that fall off our skin daily, and the mere gram of pigment difference between "black" and "white." Complementing the prose are over 300 detailed illustrations and 150 black-and-white photographs. Suitable for ages 11-14. 37,000 copies in print.
About the Author
In addition to The Evolution Book, Sara Stein is the author of The Body Book and The Science Book. Together, her books have over 345,000 copies in print.
Table of Contents
STUFF
TAKING SHAPE
Mothers and Daughters
A Cell Divides
You
A Sperm's Journey
Multiplications
The Right Sperm
Burrowing In
Spacesuit
The Little Monster
Embryonic Geometry
Insies, Outsies
Shape Up the Old Way
Male or Female
Shaping the Sexes
Suck, Pee, Kick Blink
Bump Goes the Baby
Finishing Touches
Hints of a World Beyond the Womb
Happy Birth Day
ALL-WEATHER OUTERWEAR
Born to Die
A Slice of Skin
A Squame's Story
The Skin That Fits
How to Build a Callus
White Dust
The Way of a Wart
Five Billion Different Fingerprints
Kiss Away the Hurt
Answers in Black and White
Away with Warts
Making a Tan
A Warning
Pigment Production
The Skin of a Hair
Not so Naked
A Tortured Hair
Beastly Reminders
Okay to Shave
Flaky
Of Tears and Earwax
Not too Long, Not too Short
A Word from the Interior
Zits
Would You Believe
Seventh Grade
The Scent of Sex
Budding Out
BODY BUILDING
Spun Together
A Trip into a Scratch
Scars and Scabs
Denizens of the Dermis
Itching Juice
Making Leather
Communications Networks
When Clotting's Not Enough
Your Inner Weave
How Bones Begin
Turkey Tendons
Scars
Elastic Babies, Brittle Kids
The Renewable Skeleton
The Point of a Plaster Cast
The Better to Bite With
Fixing the Break
The Trouble is Braces
Tooth Rot
Pressure on the Bone Builders
Germ Ecology
Fuzzmakers
Spray 'em Dead
FLESH and FAT
Worm Motions
Skeletons Outside and Inside
Spurts and Spasms
Bend, Rock, Twist, and Turn
Bones, Bones, Bones
Slow Fusion
All Strung Up
Wow!
Cocoons, in Case
Dark and White
Make a Motion
Heart Stats
Muscle Building
Minimotions
Working Out
Wrinkling Up
Have a Happy Face
Cushions and Quilts
To Diet, or Not to Diet
Death by Dieting
GUTS
THE DOUGHNUT'S HOLE
Dissolving and Digesting
An Experiment with Spit and Starch
A Molecule of Water
Spit and Starch, Magnified
From Mouth to Anus
Interrupted Swallows
A Closer Look at Food
The Difference Between Knots and Noodles
Bulletin!
The Mark of the Meat Eater
A Nibbling Thought
Overstuffed
Puke
UGH!
Hmmmmmmm
Through the Loop
Degreasing Dinner
Dishpan Hands
Gurgling Along
Your Daily Dose
Eating for 40 Trillion
Mealtime for a Gut Cell
Down to the Bowels
Meet Your Guests
Oh Bellyache, Where Art Though?
Bloat
Why Once a Day?
Hard Lumps, Soft Messes
Pushin' On Out
EATING IN CIRCLES
People Versus Peas
A Short History of Eating
The Littlest Constructions Sets
Trees from Thin Air
Making It With Minerals
Milk Haters
A Very Long List
None of This Is Necessary
The Trouble with Vegetables
Minimum Daily Allowance
The Little Worm
What You Eat When You Eat a Cow
Eight Hundred Square Meters of Clay
R.I.P.
Back to the Soil
With the Help of Microbes
GOING WITH THE FLOW
Going Places Randomly
Think Small
Rapid Transit
Marble Games
The Squeezer
What's Blood?
Pulses
And That Ain't All!
Leaks in the System
No System is Perfect
Tradeoffs
Neither Feast nor Famine
Little Trickles Add Up
Say "Ahhhhhhh"
So You Think You Don't Like Liver
Detox and Cleanup Jobs
Two Hearts, Not One
Keep on Truckin'
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
Crisscross
Spreading Thin
Climate Control
Blue Blood, Red Blood
Take a Deep Breath
Smoke in the Hothouse
Supply and Demand
The Beating of the Cilia
Metal Colors
Enter the Mitochondrion
Was There an Eve?
But What is Energy?
The Art of Burning Sugar
Trapping Energy
The Receiving Line
Any Food for Fuel
Rah! Rah!
Exhalations
Carbon Dioxide Sensors
THE INSIDE SEA
Inside a Bean
Why Two!
The Rest of the Plumbing
How Not to Burst or Shrivel
As Steady as the Sea
Pickles and Jerky
The Real Stuff
Yellow Observations
Dry Fish and Drinkers
What's All the Stink About?
Satisfying Sprinkles
Varieties of Urine
A Thirst for Water, an Appetite for Salt
Such Interesting Stuff
What's Coming Down the Tube?
The Fate of Fishy Kidneys
A More Radical Renovation
Getting Ready
Arm in Arm in Arm
An Unusual Use of Blood Pressure
Big Eggs
A Vital Link
SENSES
THE WORLD THROUGH CRUST
Nosing Along
The Smallest Motor in the World
Free Samples
Born Knowing
The Smell Biz
Skunk Anosia
Messages of Plain Vanilla
The Men in the Mind
All the Way to the Pencil Tip
Gushy Gray Stuff
No Democracy for Jerks
Mixed Messages
One or Two?
Heat Control
Heat Stroke
Fever
Red Drums
Hearing Hairs
Clap Hands
Tuning In
The Camera Eye
Four Eyes
Rods and Cones
Minicomputers
A View to the Brain
From Spots to Stripes
Thanks to Carrots
Imagining the World
Need to Know
Colorblindness
More Than Eyes Can See
Our Kind
An Easy Test
Outside-In Skin
The Longest Neurons
Beyond the Sixth Sense
The Last Laugh
The Jerk
ORGANIC GOVERNMENT
Common Chemicals
The Sugar Sickness
Hormones in Disguise
Not Just Glands
Eavesdropping
Growing the Baby
What's Wrong with Old and Wise
The Superman Hormone
Who Lives to Be a Hundred
Quiet Whispers, Loud Alarms
Contradictions
How to Start a Chemical Event
It's About Time
Natural Rhythms
Millions a Day, One a Month
Crampers
Different Shapes
Minds of Their Own
Lessons in Ignorance
Hidden Genes
Rungs in the Ladder
The Education of a Cell
The Making of a Protein
Small Difference
TALES OF IGS and ANTIGEN
The Enemy is Legion
A Not-So-Simple Little Molecule
Clone 9-633-254-001
Sauce for the Goose
Zip, Slurp
Meanwhile, the T-Cell
The Alien Returns
A Killer at its Grisly Task
An Exercise in Exons
Sticking Stuff
TB Tine Test
A Shot for Extinction
Boosters
Swabbing Streptococci
Why Not the Rest of Them?
Permanent Pox
Measles Magnified
The Golden Age of the Common Cold
The Kissing Disease
Germs by Chance
Achooo!
VD
Designer Molecules
What a Way to Live!
Safe Sex?
Flu Today, Flown Tomorrow
A Germ's Luck
A Simpler Way
Infectors of Infectors
IgE, as in Error
A Frog's Way
Poison Ivy
Stickers
Unlearning
Urushiol Everywhere
The Self, and the Whole World Too
THE BIGGEST BRAIN IN THE WORLD
Zap!
An Electric Situation
An Audience of Multitudes
Not All Alike
A Fly Goes By
Touch Base, or Die
Rigor Mortis
School Days for Brain Cells
Baby Games
Remember?
Curiouser and Curiouser
Now You Don't See It, Now You Do
Aha! Oh Oh
The Rhythm of Remembering
Mysteries of Sleep
Knot, Knit, Type, Bike
Deep Down in Ancient Places
Dragon Brains
Bad Luck, Good Luck
What's Fun?
Joy Juice and Other Brain Drugs
"I Will Please"
No Measure of Success
Bad News on Drugs
The Future
Afterword: No End
Glossary
Index
Photography Credits