Drawing on work in neurology, human development, anthropology, philosophy, and the arts, this text moves from the biological evolution of the face, through the mechanics of expressionism and perception, to research on the importance of the face in the development of emotion and communication.

Cole suggests that it is only by studying such personal narratives of loss that we can understand facial function and something of what all our faces reflect. As the author advances his natural history and theory of the face, he reveals something of our nature and how it is defined, in part, by the face.