Meet Mary Roach, Bestselling Author and Master of Page-Turning Nonfiction

This event is free to attend. Seating is first come, first served.

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions and hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

You don't need to have read the book beforehand to enjoy the event, but we do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

Bookshop West Portal is truly thrilled to welcome back Mary Roach, the bestselling author of many staff favorites, including Gulp, Grunt, and Fuzz. We'll be celebrating her latest book Replaceable You, a rollicking exploration of the quest to re-create the impossible complexities of human anatomy. Join us for a festive evening with good wine and even better conversation.

About Replaceable You:

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.

Mary Roach is the author of seven best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in California.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal Avenue, San Francisco, United States