cover image Photographic Atlas of the Body

Photographic Atlas of the Body

Arran Frood, Chorlton Windsor, Science Photo Library. Firefly Books, $49.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-55297-973-0

""This book truly spans the science/art divide,"" writes Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Made by magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and other imaging techniques, the beautiful full-color photos in this volume reveal the ""intrinsic beauty"" of the human body in all its component parts. One image shows fat cells that look like a bunch of small green lima beans; another highlights the nubbly, pancake-flat cells that compose our outer layer of skin. Photographs of skeletal muscle and nerve fibers appear as colorfully surreal as a painting by Miro. An endoscope image lets readers peer through the tubular small intestine, while an angiogram shows the heart shrouded by arteries and small blood vessels that appear white, like Halloween cobwebs. (Brief captions explain the function of the cell or organ in each image.) Anyone, old or young, fascinated with the inner workings of the body will be delighted by these strangely compelling images, which look more like strange landscapes and life forms than the interior of our own physical selves.