Rumbles

A Curious History of the Gut: The Secret Story of the Body’s Most Fascinating Organ

By: Elsa Richardson

Narrated by: Zehra Jane Naqvi

The fascinating—and often secret—history of the body's most fascinating system: the gut.

The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent, inconspicuous, and content. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self.

Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system. We'll meet a diverse cast of characters including Edwardian body builders, hunger-striking suffragettes, demons, medieval alchemists, and one poor teenage girl plagued by a remarkably vocal gut, all united by this singular organ.

Engaging, eye-opening, and thought-provoking, Rumbles leaves no stone unturned, scrutinizing religious tracts and etiquette guides, satirical cartoons and political pamphlets, in its quest to answer the millennia-old question: Are we really ruled by our stomachs?

©2024 Elsa Richardson (P)2024 Tantor

Written like a high school 5 paragraph essay

The narrator sounds like a not funny version of Philomena Cunk.

definitely has an odd vegetarian bias, said as someone who is eats mainly vegetarian food, it felt out of place considering the general topic of the book.

Writer is absolutely obsessed with explicitly stating the purpose of each chapter in the beginning and repeating it at the end.

Terrible Narration

I cannot stomach the narrator... Pun intended! Do yourself a favor and listen to a sample first. I'm less than an hour in and I just cannot go further. I'm not able to focus on the book... Only the distracting, over done voice of the narrator. Her delivery just does not go with this type of book. The book itself may be wonderful, but I'll have to pick up a physical copy to read or beg Audible for a new narrator.