Mary Roach is a science author who specializes in the bizarre and offbeat with a body of work ranging from deep-dives on the history of human cadavers to the science of the human anatomy during warfare. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries―panic, exhaustion, heat, noise―and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. 'America's funniest science writer' ( Washington Post ) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war.

Grunt by mary roach