This book tells you everything you ever wanted to know about what happens to bodies after they die. From a plastic surgeon's convention, where the doctors test out the latest nip n'tuck techniques on the recently expired, to the quest for the perfect crash test dummy, Mary Roach tracks down the dead and the people who spend their days with them. For 2000 years human cadavers have been at the forefront of scientific exploration. From testing the efficiency of the guillotine, experiments to weigh the soul, calibrating crash test dummies, to advances in modern medicine such as heart transplants, the deceased body has been a silent partner to many of the major advances in the understanding of ourselves.