Overview

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. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy--the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world's most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives 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. A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives--captivating and macabre in all the right ways--she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.

Full Product Details

9781705012833

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Includes no shortage of memorable scientific minutiae and clarifications of misunderstood history along the way...The era of consent in medicine―including in organ and cadaver donation―is still in its infancy."" -- ""New York Times Book Review"" ""The true story of how people became books is surprisingly intersectional, touching on gender, race, socioeconomics and the Western medical establishment's colonialist mindset."" -- ""Los Angeles Times"" ""What begins as an investigation into fascinatingly macabre volumes becomes a reflection on medical ethics, consent and mortality."" -- ""The Economist (London)""

Author Information

Justis Bolding was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She is an American actress known for her role as Sarah Roberts on One Life to Live (2007-2009).

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