Ms. Roach is an engaging speaker as well as a writer with a flair for lively prose and unexpected subjects. Packing for Mars is not a dry summation of the Space Race. The book considers everything from space monkeys to sex at zero gravity. Ultimately, Ms. Roach reveals the challenges that must be tackled before human beings are able to visit the Red Planet. As a Salon.com review put it: "Her focus on the needs and engineering constraints of the human body and mind in an off-Earth environment refreshingly takes the spotlight off hardware and glorious conquest and places it squarely ... on the ridiculous yet noble human animal at the center of space exploration."

Ms. Roach has already plumbed the depths of a variety of major subjects in books such as Bonk (about sex), Spook (about death) and Stiff (about cadavers). She has a knack for coming up with answers to the big questions, and for inspecting her subjects intently, and from all angles, in order to discover all that is interesting about them, much to her readers'delight. She is a resident of Oakland.

Copies of Packing for Mars will be available for purchase.

For more information, please call 482-7844, or visit www.oaklandlibrary.org.