Bill Bryson's The Body meets Mary Roach's Gulp (with a dash of What's Your Poo Telling You?) in this rollicking and delightfully educational tour of our bodily emissions-from mucus to sweat to poop-revealing them to be as fascinating as they are embarrassing and proving how essential they are to human health.

In biology class, we learn that the body is a fundamentally cohesive organism, a collection of organs and tissues working together to a common purpose, all overseen by the brain and wrapped up tidily in a covering of skin....