How appropriate it seemed when I found that Joe Roach's contribution to this series began with books in manuscript form he was currently reading, since this issue arrived just when I was reading his own It in manuscript (2007). It is vintage Roach, tracing the operations of “It” in accessories, clothing, hair, skin, flesh, and bone in eighteenth-century and modern public and theatrical performance. The work is a great read—erudite, witty, and packed full of fascinating historical tidbits and brilliantly illustrative quotations. If a cultural historian can have “It,” then that would surely be Roach.