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	List of books bound in human skin is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.
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Article milestones Date Process Result October 8, 2023 Featured list candidate Promoted
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " Did you know?" column on September 16, 2023. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that known books bound in human skin include a highwayman's memoirs bound in his own skin, a novel about a man being left by his lesbian wife, and a BDSM erotic poem?

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton ( talk) 21:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC) reply

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A book reportedly bound in human skin

• ... that known books bound in human skin (pictured) include a highwayman's memoirs bound in his own skin, a novel about a man being left by his lesbian wife, and a BDSM erotic poem? Source: Rosenbloom, Megan (20 October 2020). "The Anthropodermic Book Project's List of Confirmed Human Skin Books as of March 2020". Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin. New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 229–230. ISBN  978-0-374-13470-9.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dan Simonescu
  • Comment: There are many possible combinations here. I've gone with three, there are many other possibilities (but I want to keep the last one in). Images are tricky because none of the "gold-standard tested" ones have free images, but this one is generally considered confirmed. There's another image in the article of a printing of a book known to have multiple anthropodermic copies, where the copy is advertised as so, but I'm not sure if it's confirmed.

Moved to mainspace by Vaticidalprophet ( talk). Self-nominated at 04:15, 3 September 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/List of books bound in human skin; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page. reply

• General eligibility:
• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @ Vaticidalprophet: Hook needs to be fixed; the information is present in the article but in pieces. The hook needs to appear in the article with a citation no later than at the end of the sentence. RV ( talk) 09:44, 6 September 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm not sure that this is how WP:DYKRULES is meant to be interpreted, especially given the wording was just tweaked to 'sentences'. (Tabular lists are a complex case, though, because they're not common at DYK -- but a strict 'only as mentioned in the exact same place' rule for a tabular list would likely rule out any hook about the, uh, books.) Theleekycauldron? Vaticidal prophet 10:49, 6 September 2023 (UTC) reply

Yeah, that was a mistake in the summarization on my part – the hook fact can appear in pieces, as long as each bit is cited. A refs column is a standard citation format, so it's fine. theleekycauldron ( talk • she/her) 21:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC) reply

It's good to go then. Thanks RV ( talk) 01:31, 7 September 2023 (UTC) reply

Pinging @ Vaticidalprophet: I don't want to call you the resident human skin book expert, but...In any case, I am sadly personally familiar with a case of anthropodermic bibliopegy that was relatively high-profile in my hometown and grad school. The Iliff School of Theology in Denver possessed a book, a Latin-language history of Christianity entitled Institutionum Historiae Christianae Compendium, that was previously bound in the skin of an American Indian. The skin, likely that of a Lenape (Delaware) man murdered by a white man under the pretense of trespassing, was removed and buried after student and outside pressure in 1974, with the event suppressed by confidentiality agreements. George Tinker, a professor at Iliff, has been a leading voice in exposing this ugly incident. I have some fairly reliable sources that covered this specific book (which I plan to write an article about); I'll list them below. Do you think it merits inclusion on this FL?

• McKinley, Carol (2 October 2022). "Decades after displaying book bound with human skin, Denver's Iliff School of Theology still working to make amends". The Denver Gazette.
• "Red Skin, Tanned Hide". Iliff School of Theology. 29 March 2019. [Webpage for Iliff's 2019 conference on the book.]
• Paterson, Jim (18 November 2020). "Iliff School of Theology reckons with grisly past". The Christian Century.
• Green, Roger (24 April 2022). "Relating to Wrongs: Iliff School of Theology Dealing with Some Gruesome History". Westword.
• Lewis, Shanna (2 May 2018). "White Christian Colonialism Persists In Schools, Language, Politics, Iliff's Tinker Says". cpr.org. Colorado Public Radio.

Usually, I'd have no issue plugging in an entry like this per BOLD, but I am not well-read on this topic outside of this single instance and don't wanna fudge around on a brand-spanking-new FL. Thank you, and please ping me in your first reply! ~ Pbritti ( talk) 20:58, 5 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Haven't seen this case before, Pbritti -- thanks for bringing it to my attention! It seems fine to me to list that under Suspected -- if I'm reading the sources right, the cover was repatriated well before it could formally be tested? (Intuitively, this case clusters strongly with confirmed-fakes, but that's OR. It might make it difficult to write a standalone article about, though -- if all the sources assume it's definitely legitimate, then an article would have inherent sourcing issues.) Vaticidal prophet 02:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm going to contact Iliff this Monday (or, if work proves too heavy, Tuesday) and see if they have published anything that utilized scientific methodology to confirm the composition of the cover. Reliable sources exclusively describe it as human skin. However, the only published academic material on the book is that of Tinker. Unfortunately, Tinker's writing is—by Wikipedia's standards—not reliable. I will search for additional information where I can, but I would like to see this specific book mentioned wherever you think it is appropriate. Maybe we can circle back when I can bring some perhaps non-digitized sources to bear? ~ Pbritti ( talk) 02:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Throughout this article, each reference of claims involving the race of the person whose skin was used to bind a book was concluded to have been “fraudulent.” This word suggests that the person making the claim did so while having knowledge that it was false, but submitted the claim regardless of that fact.

It would be more appropriate and less biased to use the word ‘unsubstantiated’ as this removes the general assumption of the claimant as having malicious intent, and allows for the possibility that the they had a reasonable suspicion until testing could provide definitive evidence. Asase Akua Asum ( talk) 07:58, 29 March 2024 (UTC) reply