The human face has fascinated artists, physicians, acquaintances, friends, lovers, and man and womankind since the fall of Adam. Some of the greatest endeavours of our species have sought to explain, describe, categorise, reproduce or represent the almost inexplicable nuances of detail that render us visually individual. Two of the artificial divisions of human activity — art and science — have invested huge effort in attempting to understand why we look as we do. We are taken through a history of the face from Aristotle to Bertillon, and we are left with a reminder of the pervasive nature of facial appearance in history, art and science. It is relatively recently that disciplines as apparently diverse as sculpture, psychology, anatomy, dentistry, criminology and forensic science have collaborated in an attempt to ‘identify the unidentifiable’ — to pull the rabbit out of the hat and rebuild the ravaged and damaged face to make it once more recognisable.

A moment's thought will convince the reader that to become an ‘expert’ in these matters, let alone to bring together in one volume the current state of the art, requires substantially more than a broad artistic or scientific training. The author has excellent credentials, since whilst trained in art, sculpture and facial reconstruction, she has applied rigorous scientific assessment to her own work and the work of others, and has produced a comprehensive work of scholarship that will be required reading for those with the most eclectic connection with the mysteries of their own faces and the faces of others.