Be prepared to marvel at the miracles of the human body. This book will amaze and humble you.Its subtitle, A Guide for Occupants, sums up the book’s accessibility. The content is understandable and well-crafted. The chapters are short explorations into bodily functions and anatomy, supported by historical backdrops.I’m aware of Bill Bryson’s penchant to explain the world’s phenomena: See, A Short History of Nearly Everything. This book, The Body, is also a short history of the brilliant workings of our bodily machinery: its systems, functions, diseases, symptoms, and of course, the big sleep. Each chapter is a mini-course in biology, contextualized by key events in history (i.e. discoveries, surgeries, therapies).You’d marinate in this book over time versus absorbing it one sitting. There are too many disparate facts to internalize all at once. You’d “escape into” this book when you’re desirous of the knowledge and insights that should reawaken your curiosity of life as we know it.Life can be either blissful or miserable depending on your health. For those who hit the health lottery, life is blissful and energizing. For those who drew the wrong numbers, it can be a grisly nightmare of unrelenting pain. The chapters on pain, disease, and death should rekindle serious gratitude. For example, “every day, it has been estimated, between one and five of your cells turn cancerous, and your immune system captures and kills them.”This book is for anybody interested in the human body. I gifted this book to a doctor last year. It could be an entertaining refresher because it is expressed a thriller—not the typical medical treatise. I have read the hard copy and have listened to it on audible. The audible narrator aligns perfectly with the tone of the book.15 Interesting facts in the book:1. 40% of adult Americans—about 100 million—experience chronic pain at any given time. It affects more people than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined.2. Pain is mysterious, and we’re not effective at curing it.3. Disease outbreaks pop up, disappear, and may then reappear.4. The medical profession has produced absolute heroes who invented solutions (i.e. vaccines & therapies) that mitigate a staggering amount of suffering.5. The United States has 4% of the world’s population but consumes 80% of its opiates.6. There are about 7,000 rare diseases. (1 in 17 people have rare diseases—which does not seem “rare.”).7. Our “lifestyle diseases” a/k/a “mismatch diseases” (i.e. heart disease or diabetes caused by indolent or overindulgent lifestyles) have surpassed diseases of infection or genetics.8. Medicine has gotten so good at treating the symptoms of lifestyle diseases that we’ve perpetuated their underlying causes.9. Antibiotic effectiveness will soon be muted by new strains of bacteria.10. 40% of us will discover that we have cancer at some point in our lives. Many, many more of us will have it but die of something else first.11. Half of men over 60, and three-quarters of men over 70 will have prostate cancer at death and not even know it. It has been suggested that all men would have prostate cancer if they lived long enough.12. Cancer cells do not provoke an inflammatory response, which is why they appear painless and invisible in their early stages.13. Cancer is a “price” we pay for evolution. If cells did not mutate, we would not evolve.14. Cancer is an “age thing.” For men, between birth and age 40, we have a 1 in 73 chance of getting it. After age 60, our odds skyrocket to 1 in 3 (yikes!).15. Middle-aged Americans are twice as likely to die prematurely than those in Sweden, France, Germany, and the UK.Happy reading, my fellow knowledge seekers.