LINKThe revealing story of an Oxford graduate named Laura Dillon, who secretively transformed herself into a man several years before Christine Jorgensen made "transsexual" a household word.
While primarily a biography, the book also traces the history of scientists' evolving ideas about what it means to be male or female. Kennedy (Confessions of a Memory Eater, July 2006, etc.) makes use of Dillon's own writings and those of other transsexuals; she consulted plastic surgeons, members of the transgendered community and a Buddhist monk who was Dillon's mentor in India.