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View Full Version : tPF Yes, Books Were Bound in Human Skin. An Intrepid Librarian Finds the Proof.



DGUtley
10-21-2020, 08:07 AM
A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
Full disclosure: I was not eager to read about books bound in human skin. I knew almost nothing about the subject, but I felt pretty confident that nothing was more than enough. I had a vague sense that the practice of binding books in skin — technically called anthropodermic bibliopegy — was associated with the Nazis; they were long rumored to have made lampshades out of human skin (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/books/01book.html?searchResultPosition=1). But I imagined that such disconcerting relics, if real, were part of an isolated history, their existence attributable to a murderous sect. The only reason to consider skin-bound books, then, would be to indulge some twisted fascination with the depths of human wretchedness.

In her book, Rosenbloom takes us from library to library, recounting her conversations with other librarians, as well as with historians, collectors and medical students in the act of dissecting cadavers. She includes no shortage of memorable scientific minutiae and clarifications of misunderstood history along the way, including the fact that there’s no evidence that Nazis made books from human skin. (This was maybe the one abominable thing they didn’t do.) In fact, anthropodermic bibliopegy was not the practice of some singularly heinous regime. Such books were never common — Rosenbloom’s team has identified only about 50 alleged examples worldwide — but she suggests that the total number is plausibly far greater. Human skin leather looks indistinguishable from that of other mammals, and only recent developments in DNA sequencing technology have made it possible to tell a skin-bound book from a forgery.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/books/review/dark-archives-megan-rosenbloom.html


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3qjLzkib3o