In 2005, surgeons in France removed part of the face from a cadaver and grafted it onto the head of a 38-year-old woman grossly disfigured by a dog attack. Three years later, in December, 2008, surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic announced they had performed the first U.S. face transplant. Although modern culture is accustomed to pushing medicine and the human body beyond all limits, the world's first partial face transplant and the seven that have followed have caused a stir that still reverberates globally.

This book begins with the story of Isabelle Dinoire, the recipient of...