Leonard Glick is in a unique position to comment on circumcision. A knowledgeable Jew who was both a practicing medical doctor and professor of cultural anthropology, he puts both his MD and PhD to remarkable use in this very scholarly, engaging book. Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America is an historical and social tour-de-force that traces this arcane blood ritual from its origins at the dawn of Judaism to its current position in American medical malpractice. This book is a must read for anyone who thinks circumcision is necessary for Jewish identity; for any medical student or doctor who thinks circumcising infant males is good, ethical medical practice; for any parent contemplating the amputation of his or her baby's natural genital arrangement; or for anyone curious to know how circumcision came to be and why it shouldn't be.

Professor Glick, an anthropologist and medical doctor, has done a magnificent job of revealing the history, Biblical, Talmudic, and medieval, behind Judaic circumcision and of discussing the hold which brit milah exerts on most Jewish clergy, physicians, and parents of today. Both Jews and Gentiles will benefit from his trenchant analysis.

He adeptly summarizes what might be said of all genital modifications: "[T]he deepest significance of circumcision resides not in abstract spiritual realms but in the basic facts of social life: sexuality and masculinity, power and weakness, dominance and submission." (Page 26).

Glick illuminates the psychological power of an entrenched religious, and now social, custom and its effect upon modern medical practice in the United States by stating the facts and allowing the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. He is never accusatory.

His recitation of the treatment of circumcision in the modern media is food for serious thought. If circumcision is a positive good, how can we be so nervous about it; and why must it always be discussed with the levity he describes?

He briefly sets forth the medical arguments against neonatal circumcision and counters pro-circumcision errors in interpretation.

Every prospective parent should read this book.