Clyde Snow is a practitioner of forensic anthroplogy. He is employed by police forces and governments in every continent to identify human remains, to interpret the signatures in skeletons that are as good as fingerprints in distinguishing one individual from another. Over the last two decades, forensic anthropologists have extended their field of activity from police morgues and air-crash sites to the political arena. Among Snow's most celebrated cases have been the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, the victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the soldiers who died with General Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876 and the thousands in Argentina who disappeared under the military junta. This book is a scientific study in which the adventures of Clyde Snow are interwoven with an exploration of the techniques used in the Mengele investigation and in criminal and political cases all over the world. It reads like a detective story and at the same time traces the dramatic advances that have been made in forensic methodology.