PositiveThe New York Times Book Review[Rosenbloom] includes no shortage of memorable scientific minutiae and clarifications of misunderstood history ... The era of consent in medicine — including in organ and cadaver donation — is still in its infancy. Rosenbloom’s book, and the skin-bound books she discusses, compel us to reckon with that arc, and to try to bend it more urgently in an ethical direction ... Rosenbloom does not spare us the details of the methods by which skin-bound books were made, right down to the techniques of tanning, soaking and scraping the \'hides\' to preserve them. At times her descriptions seem gratuitously to indulge the same morbid fascination that has long drawn people to these objects. But she finds a way to indulge that fascination without the exploitation inherent in the books’ production. Despite their gory history, Rosenbloom suggests, something draws us to behold physical proof of \'what happens when immortality is thrust upon us.\'
