Available in English (hardcover and paperback) and Japanese (hardcover). The easiest way to buy One of Us is through Amazon.

From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex:

“The evidence Alice Dreger marshals in this impressively argued, immensely readable book, suggests that conjoined twins are often perfectly at home in their shared skin, a fact that stretches, if anything, only our assumptions about their double lives. In articulating the rights of the individual in the most intimate of corporations, Dreger makes a persuasive argument for changing society rather than people.”

— Jeffrey Eugenides

I am honored that this book was named Book of the Month by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and that it received an honorary mention for the 2005 Gustavus Myers Book Award of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.

From the jacket of the book:

Must children born with socially challenging anatomies have their bodies changed because others cannot be expected to change their minds? One of Us views conjoined twinning and other “abnormalities” from the point of view of people living with such anatomies, and considers these issues within the larger historical context of anatomical politics. Anatomy matters, Alice Domurat Dreger tells us, because the senses we possess, the muscles we control, and the resources we require to keep our bodies alive limit and guide what we experience in any given context. Her deeply thought-provoking and compassionate work exposes the breadth and depth of that context—the extent of the social frame upon which we construct the “normal.” In doing so, the book calls into question assumptions about anatomy and normality, and transforms our understanding of how we are all intricately and inextricably joined.

More Reviews of One of Us:

The New Yorker:

“[T]his surprisingly entertaining book examines cultural reactions to conjoined twins and other anatomical anomalies…. Nowadays, pediatric surgeons so prize normalcy that they perform sexual surgery on infants without concern for adult function; they may also withhold information from parents, and even override their consent, when dealing with birth defects… [Dreger’s] examples persuasively make the case that the anatomically different feel normal to themselves.” — Laurel Maury

London Review of Books:

“Dreger also wants us to think about what she calls ‘the limits of individuality’. Most of us have (or have had) attachments so close that they make us feel conjoined. A breast-feeding infant is parasitic on her mother. A foetus is even more so…. Lovers touch all the time; even in sleep they reach out to each other. In the days when people married ‘for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health’ they were conjoining themselves; they were, in the words of the Prayer Book, ‘one flesh’. And most of us have had experience of separations so dreadful we doubt that we can ever recover from them. The child is weaned; love ends in divorce; people we love die and leave us on our own. Conjoined twins serve as a metaphor for fundamental truths about what it is to be human. Much of the book’s power, much of its importance, derives from the ways in which the stories it tells resonate with the lives of those who are neither conjoined nor intersexual. Reading this book brought home to me, for example, just how painful I find it to be irrevocably separated from my sister. Each reader, I suspect, will find their own story here.” — David Wootton

New England Journal of Medicine:

“Dreger’s book stands out for her extensive use of both historical literature and the current media. More important, she draws on her personal relationships with many of the people she write about, and even her experience as a relatively new mother….[S]he provides ample reason to ask ourselves the question ‘Why not change minds instead of bodies?’” — Gretchen Worden

Nature:

“[Dreger] questions whether difference has to be viewed as an impairment and whether impairment is tragic…Disability arises not from the impairment but from the response to it in those around, and so is socially induced…Dreger makes no claim to know all the answers but, by taking their side so eloquently, she invites us to see conjoined twins as ‘no more broken than the rest of us.’ This book is an eloquent and humane plea to see conjoined twins, and others with impairment and disability, as ‘us’ and not ‘them.’”

— Jonathan Cole

Bulletin of the History of Medicine:

“Alice Domurat Dreger’s new book is a remarkable continuation of the work she began with her Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (1998). This book, however, is even more engaging as it deals with the history and current use of surgical intervention in cases of conjoinment…. One of Us is clearly written and forcefully argued. The reader is led to think about other questions (such as race vs. conjoinment) but is not led off into digressions. Dreger’s incorporation of the secondary literature is discreet rather than ham-fisted. This is a book that will have a wide readership.” — Sander L. Gilman

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association):

“Dreger illustrates how the medical milieu imposes unfounded theories of mental health and bodily integrity on young children to push parents and families to accept mutilating surgeries in the name of a heroic ‘fight’ form ‘normal’ individualism. I find Dreger’s critique, as well as her outline for an ethical evaluation of corrective pediatric surgeries, comprehensive and forceful. This book, therefore, bears on the daily practice of surgeons caring for conditions ranging from accessory fingers to cleft palates…Moreover, as the author also offers a preliminary critique of contemporary surgery and anatomy in general, I find the book a must-read for every study and practitioner of bioethics.”

— Y. Michael Barilan, M.D.

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Book of the Month:

“One of Us is an important and insightful book written with humour and compassion, and a book full of surprises….This book is not a polemic. Alice Dreger is not seeking an end to separation surgery or surgery for the intersexed, nor even, if I read her right, saying that killing Rosie [Attard] was necessarily unjustifiable. Rather what she seeks to do is to show us that people whose anatomies are very different from most of ours are nevertheless people. Her plea is that we learn more about their lives and how these can be altered for better or for worse by medicine.” — Ross Kessel

From the author of My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS:

“One of Us is a fascinating, reasoned, and marvelous exploration of a subject we can’t help being drawn to. Alice Dreger’s book has forced me to rethink my most basic assumptions about the issue of identity and separateness, for which I am most grateful.”

— Abraham Verghese

Cleft Palate Journal:

“Dr. Dreger’s discussion serves as an important reminder to stop periodically to question the philosophical underpinnings and implications of our day-to-day practice. Dr. Dreger reminds us to seek to understand each patient’s preferences and priorities to learn how these shape their identity, goals, and decisions….This book should be read by surgeons and all other health professionals who work to ‘normalize’ the appearance of infants, children, adolescents, and adults. Dr. Dreger’s sometimes provocative stance forces one to pause and question the goals of physically altering surgery, and her questions are very worthwhile.” — Helen M. Sharp

Hastings Center Report:

“In her illuminating and highly readable new book, One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal, historian of medicine Alice Dreger looks beyond altruistic explanations for surgical separation to ask some important questions: How ‘successful’ are these surgeries? How do conjoined twins feel about their conjoinment? Why are separation surgeries performed and why do they seem so necessary? Dreger’s concern is less with what we can do and more with what we should do….Dreger’s gift to the reader is that she challenges us to think of the ways in which we all seek to normalize our anatomies—via teeth whitening, shaving, wearing eyeglasses, and undergoing cosmetic surgery.”

— Katrina A. Karkazis

Disability Studies Quarterly:

“Dreger’s keen awareness of the psychosocial pressures exerted upon well-meaning parents, physicians, and individuals with physical differences lends richness to her analyses, even as it further complicates the medical and social controversies discussed. Dreger candidly discusses the challenges faced by these figures, while critically interpreting their decisions and the consequences of these decisions for people with disabilities….In the later chapters of her book Dreger also identifies some of the most disturbing assumptions that drive the medical normalization of conjoined, intersex, and short-statured anatomies. People with these conditions are studied, made into spectacles, and subjected to extensive and often painful physical manipulation for the ultimate purpose of removing or ‘preventing future instances’ of these human differences. When, as Dreger points out, these physical differences are understood by the individuals possessing them as an integral part of their selves, however, it is in fact the valuable, unique identities of individuals that are threatened with eradication. Dreger’s insight that such an end might be the ‘future of normal’ is both profound and horrifying.” — William Etter

The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society:

“Dreger argues, counterintuitively, that previous eras were actually more accepting of physical differences such as conjoinment than our own, and therein lies a lesson. Although, as the opening credits of the movie Freaks remind us, ‘the love of beauty is a deep-seated urge which dates back to the beginning of civilization,’ it is also an urge that can lead to harmful extremes. Dreger concludes her book by arguing that ‘in the United States, the values of individualism, self-improvement, free enterprise, and high-tech medicine have combined in the past few decades to create a culture in which one is able—indeed, even expected—to employ medical technologies to alter one’s anatomy and make it more socially advantageous.’ But as the history of conjoined twins makes clear, the attempt to eliminate every perceived imperfection can have unintended consequences for society as a whole, particularly when that impulse leads to a winnowing of who we will accept as ‘one of us.’”

From the author of Babyface: A Story of Heart and Bones:

“Dreger is a perceptive, warm, thought-provoking and at just the right times, humorous writer. Her goal—to transform the assumptions made about people born with unusual anatomies—is wonderful and essential, especially for a culture that wishes to embrace diversity. Although her focus is on the most extraordinary form of human anatomy, conjoined twins, she also explores intersex, dwarfism, giantism and cleft lip in her effort to reform the ‘deformed’ narrative. She weaves these voices with her own, creating a powerful historical perspective on the intersection of anatomy, surgery and social identity. After reading this book, all readers will reflect on being ‘defective’, on the myriad ways that the body is and is not our destiny.” — Jeanne McDermott

The Bulletin of Medical Ethics:

“Challenging widely held assumptions is never easy, but that is exactly what Alice Dreger does in this thought provoking and compassionate book…Dreger suggests that raising the political consciousness of all those with unusual anatomies will benefit them and help shift societal attitudes towards acceptance and integration rather than ‘normalisation.’ This discussion will become increasingly important as medical techniques offer more sophisticated means of detecting, eliminating or treating the ‘abnormal.’”

From the author of Extraordinary Bodies:

“Alice Dreger’s book makes a complex and subtle argument for why we should trouble the notion of normal—perhaps the most unchallenged, seemingly commonsensical, foundational idea of our particular place and historical moment. Questioning such an accepted and unexamined concept as normal and the practices that enforce it requires careful rhetorical strategies, subtle arguments, and intricate complexity. Dreger has done this remarkably well, always keeping her writing accessible and lively. More important, she recognizes and acknowledges the cultural logic most of us have absorbed that supports our understanding of conjoinment as a personal tragedy to be undone by medical intervention at any cost and our view of conjoined people as suffering intensely because they are not singletons.”

— Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

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One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal