The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human

The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human

by Adam Piore
The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human

The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human

by Adam Piore

eBook

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Overview

Fareed Zakaria GPS Book of the Week

Weaving together vivid storytelling and groundbreaking science, The Body Builders explores the current revolution in human augmentation, which is helping us to triumph over the limitations and constraints we have long accepted as an inevitable part of being human

For millennia, humans have tried—and often failed—to master nature and transcend our limits. But this has started to change. The new scientific frontier is the human body: the greatest engineers of our generation have turned their sights inward, and their work is beginning to revolutionize mankind.

In The Body Builders, Adam Piore takes us on a fascinating journey into the field of bioengineering—which can be used to reverse engineer, rebuild, and augment human beings—and paints a vivid portrait of the people at its center. Chronicling the ways new technology has retooled our physical expectations and mental processes, Piore visits people who have regrown parts of their fingers and legs in the wake of terrible traumas, tries on a muscle suit that allows him to lift ninety pounds with his fingertips, dips into the race to create “Viagra for the brain,” and shadows the doctors trying to give mute patients the ability to communicate telepathically.

As science continues to lay bare the mysteries of human performance, it is helping us to see—and exist—above our expectations. The Body Builders will take readers beyond the headlines and the hype to introduce them to the inner workings and the outer reaches of our bodies and minds, and explore how new developments are changing, and will forever change, what is possible for humankind.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062347169
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 12/15/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 377
File size: 930 KB

About the Author

Adam Piore is an award-winning journalist. A former editor and correspondent for Newsweek Magazine, his narrative features have appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Nautilus, Discover Magazine, Mother Jones, Playboy, Scientific American, the Atavist, BusinessWeek, and many others.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Moving

Chapter 1 The Bionic Man Who Builds Bionic People: Replicating the Way We Move 13

Chapter 2 The Birth of BAMM-BAMM: Decoding the Genome and Rewriting It 53

Chapter 3 The Man with the Pixie Dust: Regenerative Medicine and the Quest to Regrow Limbs 95

Part II Sensing

Chapter 4 The Woman Who Can See with her Ears: Neuroplasticity and Learning Pills 137

Chapter 5 Soldiers with Spidey Sense: Intuition and Implicit Learning 179

Chapter 6 The Telepathy Technician: Decoding the Brain and Imagined Speech 219

Part III Thinking

Chapter 7 The Boy Who Remembers Everything: Viagra for the Brain 253

Chapter 8 The Surgeon Conducting the Symphony: DBS and the Power of Electricity 289

Chapter 9 Sudden Savants: Unleashing the inner Muse 313

Conclusion 339

Acknowledgments 349

Notes 353

Index 367

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