Replaceable You
Adventures in Human Anatomy
16 September 2025
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet?
In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina?
Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International.
Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
Reviews
"Replaceable You by turns surprises and delights, revealing information that even I didn’t know…These curious facts, with attendant and laugh-inducing footnotes, keep us turning the pages, but the real power of the book lies in its humanity." — Brandy Schillace, Wall Street Journal
"Readers will feel awe at all the body can do and how it is made, as well as admiration for humanity’s persistence in exploring its limits—whether when confronted with a malfunctioning organ or the desire for a more plump derriere. Replaceable You will delight Roach’s fans and surely garner some more." — Kelly Blewett, Bookpage
"Since she burst onto the scene with 2003’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, the science writer Mary Roach has been grossing readers out with curiosity, humanity — and alarming gusto. And we can’t look away." — The New York Times
"Mary Roach offers a fascinating tour of the wonderful world of regenerative medicine." — Time
"The humanity that [Roach] brings is such a wonderful base for how our bodies fail us sometimes and what we are trying to do to bring them back." — LA Times, The 5 Best Science Books of 2025
"A veteran science writer returns with a whirlwind tour of body modification and repair . . . what Roach does best sounds simple but isn’t: She meets people and gets them to talk about complex subjects in a way that is approachable, understandable, and graspable." — Christopher Kemp, Science Magazine
"The subject matter can be grimly fascinating and isn’t for the squeamish, but Roach tackles it with the same energy and sense of humor she brought to previous books on cadavers, space travel and sex. She follows her curiosity wherever it leads — whether that’s a pig farm in the Chinese province of Sichuan; a Tblisi, Georgia-based surgery practice that specializes in penis transplants; or the inside of a 1950s-style iron lung." — Alice Robb, Bloomberg
"In her latest book, author Mary Roach does what she does best: she selects a squirm-worthy subject (past examples have included cadavers, digestion and
copulation) and transforms it into a lively tale of science and the human endeavor. . . . Some organs may be replaceable, but the endlessly endearing and fascinating Mary Roach is not."
— Brianne Kane, Scientific American
"This book is so good and it's on my list because it's right on topic with Gone Before Goodbye. Replaceable You by Mary Roach is all about how in the future, we will be able to replace every organ in our body that fails." — Reese Witherspoon
"We are all replaceable to some degree or another . . . with the exception of Mary Roach. There is no one and nothing like her—singular, bizarre, dedicated, passionate, fascinating. Her writing traffics at the unusual intersection of science, storytelling, and humor. That is a very tricky intersection to navigate, and no one does it as masterfully or consistently as she. I devour everything she writes." — Jason Alexander, actor/director
"Mary Roach has had a more direct impact on my career than any other writer. She is her own genre of book—gonzo, hilarious, wildly educational. This is Roach at her finest." — Daniel Kraus, author of Whale Fall
"In her brilliant (and brilliantly funny book) Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the puzzle of the human body, the way we can assemble and reassemble the very human pieces into different versions of who we are and how we work. The result is intriguing, compassionate, wise and—as with all her books—addictively readable. Or to put this another way: Don't miss it." — Deborah Blum, best-selling author of The Poisoner’s Handbook
"Science writer Roach engagingly explores the past, present, and future of fabricated replacement body parts and regenerative medicine. She has previously penned books about the body, including Gulp (2013), and brings her distinctive nonfiction writing style, headlined by curiosity, enthusiasm, and lots of humor, to this subject, too. . . . Highly recommended reading for those curious about 'fixes' for the body and the world of biotechnology." — Tony Miksanek, Booklist (starred review)
"An amiably entertaining, endlessly intriguing stroll through the stuff of which we’re made." — Kirkus (starred review)
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