And Then You're Dead

Starred review from March 15, 2017
Readers wondering what would really happen if someone were buried alive should look no further than this arch, brainy volume. Cassidy and Doherty present an exhaustive series of deadly scenarios ranging from the absurd ( What If You Toured the Pringle Factory and Fell off the Catwalk? ) to the unlikely ( What If You Were Holding This Book and It Instantly Collapsed into a Black Hole? ) to the worryingly possible ( What If You Lived in a Nuclear Winter? ), and in every chapter, they offer vivid, engaging, and utterly fascinating scientific explanations. This merrily macabre compendium playfully offers lessons in basic human physiology, nuclear fusion, quantum physics, and fluid dynamics, among other things, and at every turn, the authors explain the concepts cogently and with gleeful enthusiasm. At times, this is uproariously funny, as in the chapter about getting in a tub of liquid helium, at a balmy -452 degrees: not only would you die spectacularly, but your shrieks of pain would emerge as high-pitched squeaks. Elsewhere, it's poetic: skydiving from the International Space Station would turn you into a flaming streak of ionized plasma far brighter than any shooting star. With bite-size morsels of astonishing science and the perfect combination of smart-alecky writing and black humor, this page-turner will surely debunk any misapprehension that science is dull.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)