Today, I’m recommending Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.
Known for her humor and insatiable curiosity, Roach has carved her own unique path through the serious and somewhat sedate world of science writing. Covering everything from dead bodies in her early work, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, to the science of humans at war in her latest work Grunt, Roach has established herself as a go-to author for insatiably curious readers wanting to know just a little bit more about the quirky, unconventional aspects of science.
In Packing for Mars, Mary Roach tackles the irresistibly strange science of space travel by asking the tough questions.
What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a spacewalk? What happens when you can’t walk for a year? Or smell flowers? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? Why is it impolite for astronauts to float upside down during conversations? Just how smelly does a spacecraft get after a two week mission?
Armed with a love of the absurd and a thirst for knowledge, however strange it might seem, Mary Roach has written an utterly entertaining tale on the tough and somewhat disgusting realities about life in outer space.
Check out Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void and Mary Roach’s other humorous works of science nonfiction at the Sioux City Public Library.
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