Skulls: Portraits of The Dead

Skulls: Portraits Of The Dead by Paul Gambino

In this unusual and macabre history book, author Paul Gambino takes the reader through the ages to try to gain a better understanding of the human skull and the strange potency it holds in our cultural imaginations.

In a series of short stories and interviews, with many gorgeous (if quite spooky) pictures, Gambino talks to skull collectors from around the world and reveals some of the traditions that have caused skulls to be kept and even decorated and carved after their former owners are long decomposed. Around the world various cultures have even more widely varied traditions with regard to how the skulls of the deceased ought to be preserved, and this book documents many of those traditions.

For the morbidly curious, this book may just scratch the itch to know more about that most iconic of symbols for death and our own eventual decomposition.