When you meet people whether they re fully clothed on the street or scantily clad on the beach the first part of their body that you see smell and perhaps touch is the skin. Skin is our largest and most visible organ our personal poster board for decoration and advertisement. Nina Jablonski gives us the best and most fascinating account of everything that you might want to know about the packaging of our anatomy. We expose it cover it paint it tattoo it scar it and pierce it. Our intimate connection with the world skin protects us while advertising our health our identity and our individuality. This dazzling synthetic overview written with a poetic touch and taking many intriguing side excursions is a complete guidebook to the pliable covering that makes us who we are. Skin: A Natural History celebrates the evolution of three unique attributes of human skin: its naked sweatiness its distinctive sepia rainbow of colors and its remarkable range of decorations. Jablonski begins with a look at skin s structure and functions and then tours its three-hundred-million-year evolution delving into such topics as the importance of touch and how the skin reflects and affects emotions. She examines the modern human obsession with age-related changes in skin especially wrinkles. She then turns to skin as a canvas for self-expression exploring our use of cosmetics body paint tattooing and scarification. Skin: A Natural History places the rich cultural canvas of skin within its broader biological context for the first time and the result is a tremendously engaging look at ourselves.