Life at the Extremes - Tapa dura

· ‘For would-be explorers snuggled up in their armchairs – or, indeed stretched out on the beach – Dr Ashcroft's book, with its many vicarious thrills, makes for ideal holiday reading.’ Economist

The debut of a female Steve Jones – likeable, literate, lucid and laconic. A sumptous, lavishly illustrated book on the science of human survival

How do people survive extremes of heat, cold, depth and height? This book explains all.

For the geneticist, inheritance is all. But for the physiologist, extremism is all. This book explores the limits to human survival and the physiological adaptations which enable us to exist under extreme conditions. In man’s battle for survival in the harshest of environments, the knowledge imparted by physiology, the ‘logic of life’, is crucial.

Man can only tolerate a limited range of environmental conditions, whereas other lifeforms thrive in the most intense conditions – in 100°+ heat or many, many leagues under the sea in utter darkness or deep in the middle of rocks. Why is this so?

Height – Why did physiologists initially predict man would never reach the summit of Everest unaided? How does altitude work?
· Cold – How long can you survive immersed in ice-cold water? Why can aborigines sleep in the outback when Caucasians can’t? Why don’t penguins get frostbite?
· Heat – Why do marathon runners collapse from heat? How do we sense heat? What is the secret of the Kalahari bushmen?
· Depth – What are the bends? Why don’t sperm whales get them? Why do deep-sea divers suffer bone disorders?
· Speed – Is there a limit to how fast we can run, jump, swim or cycle? Will men always be faster than women? Why can animals always beat us?
· Space – How much acceleration can the human body withstand? How does an astronaut survive? How far into deep space can a body travel?