“Human skin books force us to consider how we approach death and illness, and what we owe to those who have been wronged or used by medical practitioners.”

Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, by Megan Rosenbloom

Summary

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.

My Thoughts

I don’t read a lot of non-fiction in general; it tends to be very academic and not interestingly written. When I do read it, it has to be about a topic I genuinely love learning about: queer history and neuroscience being the main ones. However, when I saw this book in a bookshop, I just knew I had to buy and read it. It’s not a terribly thick read, and it was genuinely fascinating. Every single chapter, Rosenbloom embarks on another journey, discovers another story. From the highway robber who would have died unkonwn if not for his final request to have his story written and bound in his own skin (the only book Rosenbloom finds was consensually made) to terrible stories of graves robbed for science and doctors stealing the skin of poor women of color, each story is more entrancing than the last. It was a truly educational read that has stuck with me, and I have not stopped recommending this book to people. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea—I know I’ve gotten my fair share of odd looks when I explain what book I’m reading!

For anyone interested in medical history or even anthropology, Dark Archives is a fascinating story of human nature, medical malpractice, the slow evolution of the strict medical laws we know today, and even how med students still practice on dead bodies donated in the name of science. Rosenbloom is doing her research at USC currently, which makes it all the more fascinating because it truly is a modern work of research, being performed as we speak. Books bound in human skin are even part of university library collections—I believe in the book, she mentions that Harvard has one. I not only learned about that, but about the practice and study it takes to be a librarian, and the myths Rosenbloom dispels there. Genuinely one of the best reads I’ve had in a while!

Review: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★