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Jul
22
Book Review: This Will Kill You by H.P. Newquist and Rich Maloof
2009 at 11am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Published May 2009 by St. Martin’s Griffin.
H.P. Newquist and Rich Maloof don’t mess around.
We’re not here to talk about the metaphysics of dying or to ponder the mysteries of the Great Beyond. We’re here to talk about the way life ends…
This Will Kill You: A Guide to the Ways in Which We Go is one of those books I love to have simply because it appears so discordant with everything else on my bookshelf. Chock full of things you never knew you wanted to know about the many ways in which we can die, it is by turns gross, funny, frightening, and downright stomach-turning. Newquist and Maloof’s collection of ways to die runs the gamut from the mundane (cardiac arrest, diabetes, etc.) to the wow-I could-have-gone-my-whole-life-without-knowing-that-and-been-very-happy-because-it’s-so-disgusting (more on this later).
The most surprising thing about these ways in which we go? “Some of them are actually kind of funny as long as they’re not happening to you.”
Amen to that.
This Will Kill You begins with “Two-Minute Med School,” a glossary of potentially unfamiliar medical terminology that serves more to entertain than to inform because really, if you’ve ever watched an episode of ER or Grey’s Anatomy, you’ll be fine, and who are we kidding, you’re not buying this book if you’re not already a little bit twisted and into this kind of thing. There’s also a handy index of icons used to indicate the “kills per annum,” lethality, and horror factor (a measure of exactly how awful it would be to die this way) for each topic.
A few of the things I learned from This Will Kill You:
There’s a lot of talk about anthrax, but on average, it only kills one person in the U.S. each year. Thought to be the cause of two of the ten Biblical plagues, this disease was once obscure, but “thanks to terrorism, it’s now feared by everyone from media celebrities to postal workers.”
The people at highest risk for being killed by black widow spiders, whose neurotoxic venom affects control of our cardiovascular and muscular systems, are “people who stick their fingers where they don’t belong.”
The Ebola virus causes symptoms that are like ”Earth’s very own Alien movie, except that the creature that eats its way through your internal organs is microscopic.” Rating a full 10 out of 10 on the horror factor scale, this kills just 40-50 people worldwide each year, but man is it a doozy. Symptoms begin with headaches, muscle aches, abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, nausea, red eyes, and dizziness and progress to bloody diarrhea, uncontrolled vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth, nose, and yes, the anus, as your blood vessels dissolve. That’s right. They dissolve.
The way I really wouldn’t want to go:
Death by guinea worm. The guinea worm enters your body when you drink water containing its microscopic eggs. After it hatches, it grows to be about three feet long while it’s living inside you. Then it decides that it needs to reproduce, which it can only do in water outside your body, so it burrows through your intestines and skin trying to escape. In the process, it releases acid that causes your skin to blister and bubble, and then it “bursts out of your body in a spaghetti-like strand.”
Appetizing, right?
But the fun doesn’t end there. When the guinea worm emerges from your body, it only peeks out a few inches. You have to gradually pull it out over the next few weeks, risking death by sepsis, tetanus, or a whole host of of infections to the exit wounds. Why this only rates a 9 out of 10 on the horror factor scale is beyond me. I can’t think about it without gagging.
In case your stomach is stronger than mine, check it out:
Luckily, those of us living in developed countries don’t have much to worry about, as guinea worms are only a problem in areas lacking a sanitary water supply. But still. Just knowing that anyone experiences this is too much for me.
The gross-out factor may be kind of high, but This Will Kill You is just as entertaining as it is disgusting, and I think it makes a perfect companion book for Mary Roach’s Stiff, which tells you all about what can happen to your body after you die.
Check out this death widget for a sample of 8 ways to die.
Thanks to Jennifer at St. Martin’s for sending me this book to review.
[...] Book Review: This Will Kill You by H.P. Newquist and Rich Maloof [...]
Thanks, I think I’ll pass on lunch today. LOL
I read about Ebola once…pretty bad way to go.
But I agree with you the guinea worm is on top of the pile for gross. Ick ooh yuck…could throw up.
Thanks for this informative review. No seriously great job, since now I don’t think I have the stomach to read it.
Well, I was with you until I scrolled down enough to see the picture. I am currently eating and you should put a warning at the top of this post to remove food from the desk before reading
It sounds like a pretty cool idea, but if there were many pics like that in the book I couldn’t read it.
Stacy–No pictures in the book. I found those beauties on a Google image search.
Ew! No thanks, I think I have every disease once I read about it so that wouldn’t be a good read for me.
The worms….gross!! My son would love to this book!! And of course after reading it he would never shut up while telling me each and every disgusting way to die!!
Once again, I am forever grateful that I was born in a developed country.
Oh man, I think I have a new book on my wish list! ;p
I remember seeing a discovery channel show on the worm— yikes! I’ve also picked through a book on ebola called The Hot Zone, definitely disgusting but still intriguing in a creepy sorta way.
Hubby loved The Hot Zone and said it was creepy but in that “wow it’s scary that this could actually happen” kind of way.
I second that emotion
I think I’m totally warped, but I could read this book….and probably be creeped out, say “ewwww” a lot and secretly like it!!
This is exactly the kind of book that I’m fascinated by. It’s horrible and scary but when I stub my toe or get a papercut I can also say “well at least I don’t have a 3 foot long worm in my belly!” Thanks for the review this ones going straight to the top of my must-have list
I am doing the Game On Diet thing and this post would have really helped me control my munchies had I seen it. Yikes!!
That makes the book somewhat tempting then
I took a parasitology class in college, and the stuff in that textbook was nasty! Still, this book sounds really interesting.
–Anna
[...] worms: Goodie! I wondered when this post would start bringing in the weirdos. [Variations on the theme that also showed up in recent search [...]