Every year human corpses meant for academic research, burial, or cremation find IT way into the hands of a group of entrepreneurs who profit by selling cadavers and body parts. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these "body brokers" capitalize on the other uses for human remains that receive no oversight, such as commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry, medical training courses, and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests, as well as the growing legitimate market for human tissue. Tracing the origins of body brokering from the "resurrectionists" of the nineteenth century to the entrepreneurs of today, journalist Annie Cheney chronicles how demand for cadavers has long driven unscrupulous funeral home, crematorium, and medical school personnel to treat human bodies as commodities.