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"A medical librarian presents a fascinating, terrifying look into history's rarest books-- those bound in human skin-- and the stories of their creation and collection"--
On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy-- the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. She exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, innocents, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship. -- adapted from jacket