The Unseen Body

This past Christmas, our family had a superspreader event. We were all vaccinated, most of us triply so, and all of us tested negative the day of our gathering. Yet few of us escaped Covid.

In the ensuing days of low-grade illness but heightened interest in the vagaries of human health, I read Jonathan Reisman’s “The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy.” Despite its unfortunate title—note to publishers, please stop shoehorning in words like “hidden” or “unseen”; it’s wearing thin—the author’s literary approach to this complicated subject proved excellent bedside material.