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Rosenbloom, a rare-books specialist drawn to issues of mortality, plumbs a practice experts call anthropodermic bibliopegy.

I had a vague sense that the practice of binding books in skin — technically called anthropodermic bibliopegy — was associated with the Nazis; they were long rumored to have made lampshades out of human skin.

In fact, anthropodermic bibliopegy was not the practice of some singularly heinous regime.

Rosenbloom came upon a case of leather-bound books whose display text claimed they were made of human skin — via a process called anthropodermic bibliopegy, practiced by 19th century doctors who wanted to give their own collections a special touch.

Mr. Gordon has also started a database to track examples of anthropodermic bibliopegy held at other institutions.