Almost a complete waste of time - very disappointing

I bought this book expecting a thorough overview of the subject for the educated lay person, but I was terribly disappointed. It started off well, giving a pretty good overview of the basic structure of the skin (although I noted a few small errors). Then the meat of the book is covered in a little depth, but the meat of this book consists solely in the author's own specialty, which is the role of melanin.

The rest of the book is a hurried, slapdash job, merely mentioning all the many topics that ought to be covered but aren't. She makes it painfully obvious that she has no interest in going into depth on anything but her beloved melanin/vitamin D topic, and the number of errors I noticed in the second half of the text increased over the first half.

Of course, the book itself is only about half there, with much of it taken up by references, all crammed in the back to make it look like a bigger book, instead of what it is -- basically a monograph on melanin.

I showed the book to my dermatologist, and his response was "pure fluff," which basically summed up my impression. Don't waste your time on this one.

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More than you ever thought you'd want to know, but very interesting.

Skin is one of the more remarkable of our organs, and in may ways. It's certainly the most visible of our organs, and it's very appearance tells us an awful lot about the person we are observing. It's the thing that we see when we see beauty. Its color can insight fear. Its wrinkles indicate age, exposure to harsh sunlight and strong winds.

Beyond that, it's skin that keeps us cool. It's skin that keeps body fluids from escaping and rainwater from coming in. Skin protects our insides from diseases, toxins, and all kinds of other nasty stuff. It even helps control our intake of Vitamin D from sunlight by making people who live in areas with little sun lighter than those who live in the tropics (thereby creating all kinds of other problems).

This book is a welcome addition to the poular science culture by providing both an interesting read and many very interesting little excursions down paths that attracted the authors attention from time to time.

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A great overview

This is a great book which tells the lay person everything they may want to know about skin, without the technical jargon of the medical text book. It covers everything from the structure and uses of skin, to how and why skin and skin colors evolved, and on into ways people have ornamented their skin. Very informative, and an enjoyable read.

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