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.
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