Both of these resources on the tattoo, one an edited volume, the other a monograph, explore the socially constructed body through this form of body art. The essay volume explores the tattoo as an icon of historical and contemporary encounters taking place across culturally defined yet continually reconceived and reshaped notions of difference between and within social groups. In the monograph, Kuwahara (who also contributes to Tattoo: Bodies ...) offers an ethnographic examination of the practice and logic of tattooing in Tahiti and, ultimately, beyond. Both books highlight the difficulties in determining origins, boundaries, and chronologies of traditional and contemporary body art, and the fluidity of body art practices and their aesthetic dispositions in the local and global milieu. The edited volume's central concern is the social and cultural encounters that produce a history from tatau (Tahitian) to tattoo. Essays explore European voyages and their encounters with Pacific Rim peoples as historical transactions in an unfolding history of cultural and social exchange inscribed in and by the emblem of the tattoo. Other essays examine the contemporary scene, noting the increasingly hybrid, global quality of tattooing and body art. Both books identify relationships between the reemergence of primitivism in the art world and the contemporary popularity of the tattoo. Kuwahara explores even further the ethnographic context of tattoo as transaction and exchange across cultures, with specific attention to the corporeality of tattooing in terms of Tahitian identity formation and the many others who have been marked by Tahitian tattooists. This anthropology of tattooing adopts phenomenological approaches to represent ways in which the practice is ideologically charged and transformed in terms of space and temporality. In the end, Kuwahara is equally concerned with cross-cultural encounter and social transaction. General audiences as well as scholars in cultural studies, history, and the social sciences will find these excellent resources. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries, both titles. S. Ferzacca University of Lethbridge