It gives me pause to admit that I absolutely loved this book written by a librarian whose specialty is the scientific analysis of archival books purportedly bound in human skin.

I initially wanted to read it out of morbid curiousity, but I really got sucked into all her various digressions about various related topics--historical suppression of midwives' expertise by male doctors, a brief trend for binding the trial records of hanged criminals in their own skin, the bodysnatchers of Edinburgh (Burke and Hare), etc.

It's not a book for the fainthearted, but neither is it gory or disrespectful of the dead. I liked reading it much more than i expected to. If you think the extended title sounds intriguing (albeit gross AF), I recommend it!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dark Archives is an amazing and fascinating journey about Rosenbloom’s quest to find anthropometric books. The book itself is very engaging through its well crafted tapestry of library and special collection visits, histories, rumors all while contextualizing the implications of this practice with our current understanding of informed consent. This book was so good, y’all. The subject matter would have been trash in inexpert hands, so thank goodness that is not the case. I plan to purchase this book for both my personal collection and for my library—I always buy spooky, weird, or macabre books with my share of our popular reading collection funds at a university library and Dark Archives will fit in nicely.