"Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. It's about all the ways we use cadavers; from medical school practice dummies to car crash tests to a field full of decomposing bodies out behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. This is where they study the rate of decomposition of corpses in various locations like under trees or out on the lawn, clothed or unclothed. Without this facility and the research that is conducted there, forensic specialists would not have been able to tell how long a body had been dead when the police find one.
I actually asked for this book for my birthday this year and my Mom got it for me. (Hmmm... maybe I should stop posting so I can keep myself a stranger, because maybe I am, more-so than others...)
I actually read a review of the book in Entertainment Weekly and it piqued my curiousity. I do have a morbid curiousity about death and things like that. The book is really facinating. I may not want to see with my own eyes the things that she describes, but that's what's so great about books. You can learn about anything.
