Jewish Frontiers

' Provocative and imaginative, Gilman' s essays offer a unique glimpse into the mechanism of cultural identity. ' - Anna Dogole, The Jewish Eye

' An extraordinarily learned, endlessly fascinating book that deals with a hot contemporary subject. ' - Elaine Showalter, Princeton University, USA

' [A] fascinating work. . . Gilman has an eye for detail, yet remains aware of the wider perspective. He also raises important questions. . . In [this] rich, elegant and beautiful [book] he shows that the history of aesthetic surgery is too important to be left to the surgeons. ' - Jonathan Cole, Times Literary Supplement

' [Gilman] tells a strange, macabre, and often richly comic story of shifting desires. His book shows a dazzling European erudition. . . There is now less furtiveness attached to aethetic surgery. But the question remains - and Gilman asks it cleverly, humanely, and persistently - whether new appearances just gloss over old problems and often create new ones. ' - New York Review of Books

' The effervescent Sarder L. Gilman' s latest volume, is a characteristically lively series of essays which examines the concept of Jewish identity from fresh and stimulating perspectives. . . and casts a cultural microscope over Jewish history on a wide frontier. ' - The Jewish Chronicle