As Rosenbloom crisscrosses the globe to confirm the purported origins of skin-bound books - a cracking detective story in itself - her journey offers unusual insight into what defines informed consent, what separates homage from exploitation, and how power disparities can breed casual inhumanity.īOOK REVIEW - “Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin,” by Megan Rosenbloom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 288 pages). It’s easy to assume this topic is too restricted or too gruesome for a book of its own, but “Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin,” proves that assumption wrong. This copy of Houssaye’s masterwork had a singular distinction: At the time, it was the only book on the planet proven to be bound in human skin.įor Rosenbloom, a librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles, the trip served as her entrée into a field she’d studied for years: “anthropodermic bibliopegy,” the practice of binding books in human epidermis. I n 2015, Megan Rosenbloom traveled to Harvard University’s Houghton Library in search of a book called “Des destinées de l’âme ” (“Destinies of the Soul”), by the French author Arsène Houssaye.
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