Cutter Wood

Broschiertes Buch

Earthly Materials

Journeys Through Our Bodies' Emissions, Excretions, and Disintegrations

Beschreibung

An “UNEXPECTEDLY PROFOUND,” “DEEPLY STRANGE,” and “UTTERLY UNIQUE tour of the human body” (Publishers Weekly) "A must read for anyone who’s ever been amazed or aghast at what just came out." — Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch To live, our bodies must continuously shed materials. Stop urinating, stop defecating, stop expelling breath, and death is near. While we often think of these materials as embarrassing waste products, they serve far more complex functions. The color of our mucus, the volume of our flatus, the rhythm of our breath: taken together, these materials tell a story of the human that produced them. Moreover, the exchange, elimination, and frequent disguise of our effluence has been elemental to the development of human civilization, and our lives today are still governed by a host of laws and superstitions and social mores about the materials our bodies leave behind. In each of twelve discrete chapters, Earthly Materials tells a story about one of the materials the human body sheds—from breath and urine to vomit and tears. Sometimes the questions examined are historical: What have we physically done with all the urine produced in our cities? Sometimes they approach the matter through a philosophical lens: Is it ever logical to cry? Sometimes they explore recent scientific discoveries: How is mucus forcing us to reconsider our understanding of natural selection? But they always offer a window into how we negotiate our place in the world and how we get along with one another. Cutter Wood's delightfully weird, richly informative, and unexpectedly poetic tour of our bodily excretions uncovers extraordinary truths about ourselves--and the human story.

Autor

Cutter Wood is the author of Love and Death in the Sunshine State. His work has appeared in Harper’s, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review  Daily, and other publications. He completed an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa, is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and was the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University. He lives in Baltimore with his partner and family.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins
• Seitenzahl: 384
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. April 2026
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 210mm x 140mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 454g
• ISBN-13: 9780063048621
• ISBN-10: 0063048620
• Artikelnr.: 74904813

Rezensionen

"The 5-year-old nose picker in me delighted in Cutter Woods's attention to all things gross in Earthly Materials, while my adult sensibilities reveled in his eminently-readable research of the infinitesimal miracles and machinations of the human body. A must read for popaholics, blood donors, the pee drinking community, and anyone who's ever been amazed or aghast at what just came out." - Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

"Provocative and profound. Earthly Materials takes us on a tour to the furthest and strangest corners of ourselves, the dimensions we generally prefer not to think or speak about, and in doing so teaches us something resounding and revelatory about who - and what - we are." - Brian Christian, author of The Alignment Problem and The Most Human Human

"An utterly unique tour of the human body...With a flair for storytelling, Wood pulls unexpectedly profound insights from deeply strange anecdotes." - Publishers Weekly