You cannot go wrong with Mary Roach. Very interesting. If you talked to me this summer you hear me repeat her fascinating explanation of sweat at least once.

As always, Mary Roach delves into topics that escape the notice of most of us. She then fascinates us with amazing facts, history, and humor. Love her!

Always interesting, doesn't shy away from the tricky questions.

Mary Roach is at her strongest when she reveals hitherto unknown stories of science. The more she gets stuck in the technical details, the harder it is to keep reading.

Grunt does a decent job of focusing on stories, especially scatological stories that often go untold. I found the chapter on food poisoning particularly entertaining.

What keeps grunt from 5-star is a consistent dance around the consequences of war. Roach explains that she doesn't want to include anything about killing. This pacifist approach sacrifices more substantive analysis to keep the light-hearted tone. This makes the entire book feel incomplete.

Grunt provides a wealth of factoids to bring up at less fancy parties. Which is always a good thing.

Though not my favorite of Roach's books (that will always go to [b:Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|32145|Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|Mary Roach|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347656489s/32145.jpg|1188203]), I found this a lot more interesting than I thought I would because it's about subjects I wouldn't have immediately thought of when thinking, 'war.'

A lot of the 'gross' that Roach does so well, (who thinks about diarrhea when fighting a battle?) along with textile science and shark repellent.

I freaking hate writing reviews on my phone, so this will be short. Roach is great, her writing is always entertaining. This seemed shorter than her other books, and I wish there had been a bit more depth in some chapters. Also there were some tone issues: her style is so irreverent, the times she got on the morality of war and philosophy of death didn't sit great with me. Stiff is still my fav. This one's on par with Spook in that they're my least favourite, but I'd read a least favourite Roach book before I'd read a great many other things. Lastly, I'm not sure if she did it on purpose or if it just turned out that way, but I appreciated how many scientists and army members she profiled were women, especially given the subject matter. Looking forward to waiting an extra year for the soft cover version of the next one to come out!

First off, this particular book smells SO FUGGIN GOOD. I definitely buried my face in it multiple times while reading.

This started out as my least favorite of her books but I think that might have been a bias I have against war. That’s war itself, not soldiers...whom I have utmost respect for as well as the sacrifices of their families.

Back to the book, she did not fail to disappoint as always...discussing poop, insects, genital reconstruction and other topics that she somehow adds humor to. I love her humor and writing style and she is definitely in my top 5 authors. I panicked because I thought this was the last book of hers I haven’t read but I found there’s still “My Planet” and a few other coauthored things. Phew. AFTER THAT THOUGH

Really, really enjoyed this one! I'm so jealous Roach gets to research such fascinating things and write about them. This was a really comprehensive look at military science, touching on everything from injuries to the sleep schedules of submariners. It's hard to summarize, so here are a few things I bookmarked as being especially interesting.

- The VA spends over $1B a year on hearing loss and tinnitus.
- When you start to overheat, vessels in your skin dilate, encouraging blood to migrate there. From the capillaries in the skin, the hot plasma is offloaded through sweat glands onto the surface of the body to evaporate. The evaporation carries heat away from the body in the form of water vapor. It's an efficient system - a human in extreme heat can sweat as much as 2kg an hour over a few hours. 10kg of sweat loss over a day is not rare for workers in overheated factories and active soldiers stationed in the tropics.
- Those who are "easy sweaters" - tending to sweat at the least bit of exertion - actually have super-efficient
- Between 2007 and 2011, there were 14,577 cases of heat illness among active US Armed Forces personnel. When soldiers work hard - and given the climes many are in and the amount of gear they wear which only exacerbate the problem - the muscles they're using demand the blood that the body needs to use for sweating. Best case scenario, you faint as your blood pressure isn't high enough to push the blood to your brain. Without enough blood to the brain, your body faints, forcing your head level with your heart. Interestingly, overheated people often pass out not in the midst of their exertion, but when they stop and rest. This is because contracting the leg muscles helps keep blood from pooling the legs.
- With regards to heat stroke, US military life rafts include sour balls int her survival food packets. But if you're suffering from heat stroke and your digestive organs are shutting down, the acidity of the sour balls stimulates saliva flow.
- When the air is cooler than 92*, the body can cool itself by radiating heat into the cooler air. The sweaty air your body generates rises away from your skin allowing cooler air to takes its place. This is also how a breeze cools you.
- The International Flavors and Fragrances developed a proprietary vomit scent at the request of a company that intended to use it as a dieting aid, a stick-up dispenser that would discourage eating by making your fridge smell like vomit. It was never produced because during testing, a certain percentage of people, particularly if they were hungry, had a positive response to the smell. As in, they wanted to eat it.
- There were some crazy tests for shark repellent and bear repellent, the latter done with the aid of used tampons. Turns out, bears looooove them. Hork.
- On the USS Tennessee, the average person gets 4 hours of sleep.