In the Flesh is an insightful examination of the more extreme body modification subculture, one that invites the reader to re-examine his or her expectations about bodies, body politics, and medical technologies. A generous writer, Pitts presents her research to the reader and offers a framework for investigating how some bodily alterations are medicalized or accepted because they enforce normative expectations about health and beauty, and how others are pathologized. In lively and lucid prose, the author provides us with a useful look at an important issue, and does so (much to her credit) without confining her research participants or her readers to a specific political camp. There may be bright political lines between circumcision, botox injections, Michael Jackson, and flesh hangings -- or then again, maybe there are not. In the Flesh gives us new tools with which to draw those lines for ourselves.