Bodypedia: A Brief Compendium of Human Anatomical Curiosities

by Adam Taor

An eclectic collection of strange and amazing stories about body parts you never knew you had, from acetabulum to zygomaticus major

Bodypedia is a lively, fact-filled romp through your body, from A to Z. Featuring almost 100 stories on topics ranging from the beastly origins of goosebumps to the definitive answer to the Motown classic “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” these fascinating tales from your entrails explore the wonders of anatomy, one body part at a time.

With a keen scalpel, Adam Taor peels away the layers to bring your underappreciated insides to light. What distinguishes crocodile tears from yours? What possessed Isaac Newton to stick a needle into his eye socket? How does brain glue thwart self-improvement gurus? Why did one of the world’s most influential surgeons steal a giant? Providing insights into these and other curiosities, Taor illuminates the ingenuity, mystery, and eccentric history of your anatomy like never before. Along the way, you will meet the geniuses, mavericks, and monsters (sometimes all the above) who got their hands bloody discovering, dissecting, and naming your parts.

With beautiful drawings by Nathalie Garcia, Bodypedia celebrates what makes you tick, and reveals why the best stories are hidden inside you.


Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

Genres: Nonfiction, Biology, Reference, Medical, Science

216 pages, Hardcover

Published June 17, 2025

Reviews

[Madelyn]

It was enjoyable and entertaining, but the writing style seemed like a blurb you read on a magazine. Sometimes it was hard to follow

[Travis]

This is a frustratingly disappointing book. I think I would like learning about the various relatively obscure anatomical features in this book, but I hate the writing. It tries too hard to be entertaining, but is too often irrelevant. For example, the very first entry is acetabulum, the socket part of the hip joint; the majority of the entry describes how a doctor in the mid 1800s used an eel pond to deflesh corpses for study; the joint in question is only relevant as an afterthought since the doctor received an injury there at a later time in his life. There's also a common pattern of entries along the lines of, "this body part is named after a person who was really rather awful and we shouldn't keep memorializing them, but what can you do; oh here's a Greco-Latin word that would describe the part just fine, but we can't get everyone to agree to use it".

[Erich]

This book is clearly targeted at a general audience, but the painfully forced puns, excessive and unnecessary alliteration, and largely irrelevant tidbits that comprise the majority of this text mask the few interesting pieces of information presented. It's essentially a book of tangentially related trivia, with an emphasis on anatomical eponyms that are (rightfully) falling out of use as they get replaced with more descriptive terminology.

I am glad the author included a full list of references on the publisher's website.

[Chris]

Bodypedia is a series of short entries about anatomical curiosities and the history behind them, written by Australian doctor-turned-journalist Adam Taor. There were some interesting tidbits here, and I liked all the etymological explanations behind the Latin and Greek medical terms, but the overly wisecrashing writing style did my head in after a few pages.

[Susan Dunker]

Delightful snippets about body parts and how they got their names. Trivia fans take notice!