#51 in Popular science
Grunt
- 285
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 4 weeks on the list, peaked at #4
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Our view
Mary Roach turns her infectious curiosity on the science of keeping soldiers intact in “Grunt”, from panic and exhaustion to heat and noise. Her subjects range from combat medicine and hearing loss to the trouble a zipper can cause a sniper. Her frank, joking approach drags unlikely topics into the open, though some readers find the humour wearing and the chapters disjointed next to her earlier books.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" ( Washington Post) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you'll never see our nation's defenders in the same way again.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 93 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 39% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Popular science average of 8.3. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 93 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Grunt?
It has 285 pages — shorter than 65% of the ranked books in Popular science.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Popular science — with scores between 7.9 and 8.6, closest to this book.
