Rumbles

Absolutely delicious * Wall Street Journal *
A vivid cultural history of changing metaphorical, political and scientific visions of our guts -- Steven Poole * Guardian *
A brilliant new cultural history of the gut * Daily Mail *
I loved Rumbles - a fascinating, erudite and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection that, despite the many claims of modern-day doctors, has fascinated physicians for hundreds of years -- Tiffany Watt Smith, author of THE BOOK OF HUMAN EMOTIONS
Fascinating ... a window onto our relationship with the gut as mediated by medicine, literature, politics and language. -- Wendy Moore * TLS *
Absorbing, serpentine ... Elsa Richardson has assembled a choice selection of ingredients. * Literary Review *
A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilised -- Paul Craddock, author of SPARE PARTS
Rumbles is more than just an extremely entertaining romp through the history of the gut and all its literary, biomedical, metaphorical, and political permutations. Marshalling a wealth of resources, Richardson offers eye-popping (and sometimes gut-wrenching) insight into how our presumed cutting-edge understanding of the gut is not as new as we might want to believe. Rumbles will persuade you that to listen to the 'rumbles' of our gut is to immerse ourselves in an abiding historical legacy, for better or for worse -- Professor Jean Walton, author of DISSIDENT GUT
Rumbles is a charming, compelling compendium of ideas and a fascinating foray into corners of history. Richardson is interested in the gut's workings, but she is also interested in its symbolism, in other words, why we are all sick to our stomachs. Rumbles could not come at a more apt or more dyspeptic moment; its discussion of gut disease as an emblem of modernity leaves readers with much to digest. It is the perfect book for our golden age of indigestion. -- Becca Rothfeld * The Washington Post *
Elsa Richardson's Rumbles surveys ideas about our digestive organs, from the suggestion by the Greek physician Galen that the stomach has its own intelligence, through dramatic metaphors of the body politic, and ideas of the intestines as a bustling Victorian kitchen, a delicate garden or an implacable enemy of human progress -- Books of the Year * Guardian *
Elsa Richardson's Rumbles also tries to recontextualise the past-and, by extension, the present. Her subject is the gut, a "confederacy of organs" that is often looked down upon in favour of the highfalutin accomplishments of the brain. However, the gut has a rich cultural history that ought to wow - rather than repel - us. Did you know, for instance, the classical physician Galen believed that the human digestive system is what enabled us to have a culture in the first place? -- Books of the Year * Prospect *