"Six beautifully wrought meditations on the art of embalming and related matters.... Dr. Gonzalez-Crussi's tone is measured, grave, and curiously formal ... with] a mordant sense of humor ... and a] courtliness and peculiar charm of his rococo style ... muscular dandyism as well as his sly and faintly risque humor...." " He] is learned, compassionate, genuinely witty and, at the most unexpected moments, strangely moving.... His learning, his diligence, his lively curiosity, together make a formidable lens that he brings to bear upon the enigma of what we are and how we cease to be..."
" He] has delivered a missive that, though the envelope may give off a whiff of formalin, is in its essence a love letter to life, in all its strangeness, beauty, and mystery." --John Banville, "The New York Times Book Review "
"More graceful, erudite, and mind-expanding essays from Gonzalez-Crussi, this time accompanied by haunting, beautiful color photographs of skeletons, skulls, medical specimens, and anatomical models. In writing that smoothly integrates medical science, history, philosophy, literature, and the arts, Gonzalez-Crussi ponders the human condition.... The opening of a Gonzalez-Crussi essay gives few hints as to where it may wander, but the journey is always rewarding." --Kirkus Reviews
"Gonzalez-Crussi ... weaves and bobs around monstrosity and death like a python about its victim--and he is nearly as mesmerizing." --Publishers Weekly
