When’s the last time a book made your skin crawl? Megan Rosenbloom--a collection strategies librarian at the UCLA library, president of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine, research team leader of The Anthropodermic Book Project, and author of Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin--delves into the who, what, when, where, and, most importantly, why of books bound in human skin. She discusses with Eve and Julie how the desensitization and clinical distancing of doctors’ attitudes towards patients during the 19th century led to an increase in the production of books bound in human skin; how public hangings and dissections were used to dissuade people from becoming criminals; and how our understanding of societal ills like political propaganda and systemic racism can be deepened by the study of books bound in human skin. Eve and Julie also get an answer to the question, Can a whole book--ink, paper, binding--be made entirely from a human body?
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