A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death--and what might follow--by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. It's okay, his father said. There's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you. That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

This experience spurred Junger--a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical--to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

It's safe to say everyone thinks about death--whether they want to or not. But have you ever wondered about what sort of keepsakes you can make with your remains, or given any thought to the most scandalous deathbed confessions throughout history? Well Madison Reyes and Spencer Henry have, and they've spent countless hours scouring the darkest corners of the internet, digging through newspaper archives, devouring documents, and picking the brains of death industry experts to bring you Obitchuary, a darkly funny and deeply poignant exploration of all things death.

With chapters like Coffin Confessions, Executions to Die For, The Last Word, and If These Dolls Could Speak, Madison and Spencer guide us through surprisingly colorful history, traditions, and contemporary practices. They also demystify taboo topics with incredible and hilarious details, including FUNerals, as they call them, cremations and themed funerals, famous body snatchers, and so much more.

Shocking, macabre, hilarious, and moving, Obitchuary digs deep into the physical aspects of death while also carefully exploring what death says about our humanity and the ways we choose to remember those we've lost. So go ahead, crack open the book--we know you're dying to read it.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the why of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie--man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after its writing.

Everyone has questions about death. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers the most intriguing questions she's ever received about what happens to our bodies when we die. In a brisk, informative, and morbidly funny style, Doughty explores everything from ancient Egyptian death rituals and the science of skeletons to flesh-eating insects and the proper depth at which to bury your pet if you want Fluffy to become a mummy. Now featuring an interview with a clinical expert on discussing these issues with young people--the source of some of our most revealing questions about death--Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? confronts our common fear of dying with candid, honest, and hilarious facts about what awaits the body we leave behind.

A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people--morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners--who work in it and what led them there.

We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we're so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell's incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

These days, so much of our lives takes place online--but what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to interact with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own--and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity--the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone--past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains.

As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past--before it is too late.

You will die. But first you will live. Wisdom of the Dying eloquently explores what brings meaning to our lives from the lens of a frontline health-care worker who watched many die over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Hamza Abbasi incorporates captivating stories from individuals contemplating their lives while on their deathbeds and delves deep to incorporate inspiration, positive psychology, and medical science. With poignancy and warmth, Abbasi details the common principles and lessons observed in patients who were ready for death when it came from-and the regrets expressed by those who were not

Dying well, Jenkinson writes, is a right and responsibility of everyone. It is not a lifestyle option. It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation each person owes their ancestors and their heirs. Die Wise dreams such a dream, and plots such an uprising. How we die, how we care for dying people, and how we carry our dead: this work makes our capacity for a village-mindedness, or breaks it.

Table of Contents
The Ordeal of a Managed Death
Stealing Meaning from Dying
The Tyrant Hope
The Quality of Life
Yes, But Not Like This
The Work
So Who Are the Dying to You?
Dying Facing Home
What Dying Asks of Us All
Kids
Ah, My Friend the Enemy

SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE - ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - AN NPR AND BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters' fields--a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn't matter to others?

In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.

The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to confront a variety of social ills, from the fracturing of families and the loneliness of cities to the toll of rising inequality. But it is also filled with unexpected moments of tenderness. In Boyle Heights, a Mexican American neighborhood not far from the glitter of Hollywood, hundreds of strangers come together each year to mourn the deaths of people they never knew. These ceremonies, springing up across the country, reaffirm our shared humanity and help mend our frayed social fabric.

Beautifully crafted and profoundly empathetic, The Unclaimed urges us to expand our circle of caring--in death and in life.

The guide to achieving the positive end-of-life experience you want and deserve, this second edition of Finish Strong by Barbara Coombs Lee, the President Emerita/Senior Adviser of Compassion & Choices, features valuable new material, including a brand new chapter called Race and Culture Matter; an Afterword by Kim Callinan, the President/CEO of Compassion & Choices; and a detailed index for the book.

It's hard to talk about death in America. But even though the topic has been taboo, life's end is an eventual reality.

So why not shape it to our values? Finish Strong is for those of us who want an end-of-life experience to match the life we've enjoyed. We know we should prepare, but are unsure how to think and talk about it, how to live true to our values and priorities, and how to make our wishes stick.

The usual advice about advance directives and conversations is important but woefully inadequate. This book describes concrete action in the here and now to help live our best lives to the end.

Finish Strong will guide you through:

- Finding a partner-doctor to honor your values and beliefs with humanity, deference and candor.

- Identifying what matters most as vigor wanes and stating your priorities.

- Having meaningful conversations with doctors and family about expectations and wishes.

- Staying off the overtreatment conveyor belt.

- Knowing when slow medicine is the best option to maintain quality of life.


- Navigating hospice, the ultimate healing experience.

Written with candor and clarity by a nurse, physician assistant and attorney who became a leading advocate for end-of-life options, this book can help you Finish Strong.

Foreword by Haider Warraich, M.D.

Preface by Barbara Coombs Lee

A Note About the Second Edition

1. An Invitation

2. Talking About Death Won't Kill You (But It Could Improve Your Life)

3. Overtreatment and Diminishing Returns

4. Let Me Die Like a Doctor

5. Hope & Heroism

6. Hospice: The Healing Option

7. The Secret of Slow Medicine

8. Escaping Dementia

9. Inside a Growing Advocacy

10. Race and Culture Matter

11. People Taking Control

12. Space for the Sacred

13. It's Harder Than You Think (But You Can Do It)

Afterword by Kim Callinan, president and chief executive officer, Compassion & Choices

Appendix: Tools to Take Charge

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About Compassion & Choices

Notes on Sources

Index

Josh Slocum and Lisa Carlson are the two most prominent advocates of consumer rights in dealing with the death industry. Here they combine efforts to inform consumers of their rights and propose long-needed reforms. Slocum is executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national nonprofit with over 90 local affiliates nationwide. Carlson is executive director of Funeral Ethics Organization, which works with the industry to try to improve ethical standards. In addition to nationwide issues, the book covers state-by-state information needed by anybody who wishes to take charge of funeral arrangements for a loved one, with or without the help of a funeral director. More information about the book and related issues can be found at www.finalrights.org .

We hear it all the time: Sorry, it was just an accident. And we've been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term accident itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm's way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.

As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the accident to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and the killer who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored.

In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today's urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of accidents--saving lives and holding the guilty to account.

Death is an inevitable fact of life. Throughout the centuries, humanity has sought to understand this sobering thought through art and ritual. The theme of memento mori informs medieval Danse Macabre, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Renaissance paintings of dissected corpses and anatomical Eves, Gothic literature, funeral effigies, Halloween, and paintings of the Last Judgment. Deceased ancestors are celebrated in the Mexican Day of the Dead, while the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to secure their afterlife.

A volume of unprecedented breadth and sinister beauty, Death: A Graveside Companion examines a staggering range of cultural attitudes toward death. The book is organized into themed chapters: The Art of Dying, Examining the Dead, Memorializing the Dead, The Personification of Death, Symbolizing Death, Death as Amusement, and The Dead After Life. Each chapter begins with thought-provoking articles by curators, academics, and journalists followed by gallery spreads presenting a breathtaking variety of death-related imagery and artifacts. From skulls to the dance of death, statuettes to ex libris, memento mori to memorabilia, the majority of the images are of artifacts in the astonishing collection of Richard Harris and range from 2000 BCE to the present day, running the gamut of both high and popular culture.

Essays:

Death in Ancient and Present-Day Mexico, Eva Aridjis

The Power of Hair as Human Relic in Mourning Jewelry, Karen Bachmann

Medusa and the Power of the Severed Head, Laetitia Barbier

Anatomical Expressionism, Eleanor Crook

Poe and the Pathological Sublime, Mark Dery

Eros and Thanatos, Lisa Downing

Death-Themed Amusements, Joanna Ebenstein

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, Bruce Goldfarb

Theatre, Death and the Grand Guignol, Mel Gordon, Holy Spiritualism, Elizabeth Harper

Playing dead - A Gruesome Form of Amusement, Mervyn Heard

The Anatomy of Holy Transformation, Liselotte Hermes da Fonseca

Collecting Death, Evan Michelson, Art and Afterlife: Ethel le Rossignol and Georgiana Houghton, Mark Pilkington

The Dance of Death, Kevin Pyle, Art

Science and the Changing Conventions of Anatomical Representation, Michael Sappol

Spiritualism and Photography, Shannon Taggart

Playing with Dead Faces, John Troyer

Anatomy Embellished in the Cabinet of Frederik Ruysch, Bert van de Roemer

You will die. But first you will live. Wisdom of the Dying eloquently explores what brings meaning to our lives from the lens of a frontline health-care worker who watched many die over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Hamza Abbasi incorporates captivating stories from individuals contemplating their lives while on their deathbeds and delves deep to incorporate inspiration, positive psychology, and medical science. With poignancy and warmth, Abbasi details the common principles and lessons observed in patients who were ready for death when it came from-and the regrets expressed by those who were not

The COVID-19 pandemic left millions grieving their loved ones without the consolation of traditional ways of mourning. Patients were admitted to hospitals and never seen again. Social distancing often meant conventional funerals could not be held. Religious communities of all kinds were disrupted at the exact moment mourners turned to them for support. These unprecedented circumstances caused dramatic transformations of not only communal rituals but also how people make meaning after the losses of loved ones.

Shattered Grief is an intimate portrait of how COVID-19 changed the ways Americans approach, understand, and mourn death. Based on extensive interviews incorporating a multitude of perspectives--including funerary and medical professionals, religious leaders, grief counselors, death doulas, spirit mediums, community organizers, and those who lost loved ones--it provides a snapshot of how people renegotiated spiritual and religious traditions, worldviews, identities, and communities during the deadliest pandemic in a century. Through these diverse and powerful voices, Natasha L. Mikles tells the story of spiritual innovation, religious change, and the struggle to achieve personal and national self-understanding against the backdrop of mass casualties. Compelling and accessible, Shattered Grief is an essential book for a range of readers interested in how we make sense of death and dying.

Copies of this book should be in every doctor's office in the country, to educate patients and doctors themselves! --Diane Rehm, interviewer and narrator of the PBS documentary When My Time Comes

An intimate investigation of assisted dying in America and what it means to determine the end of our lives.

In this groundbreaking book, award-winning cultural anthropologist Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying--a legal option now available to one in five Americans.

Drawing on five years of research on the frontlines of assisted dying, Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives masked by a polarized national debate. Among them are Ken, an irreverent ninety-year-old blues musician who invites his family to his death, dons his best clothes, and goes out singing; Derianna, a retired nurse and midwife who treks through Oregon and Washington to guide dying patients across life's threshold; and Bruce, a scrappy activist with Parkinson's disease who fights to expand access to the law, not knowing he would soon, in an unexpected twist of fate, become eligible himself.

Lyrical and lucid, sensitive but never sentimental, The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine. Meticulously researched and compassionately rendered, the book exposes the tight legal restrictions, frustrating barriers to access, and corrosive cultural stigma that can undermine someone's quest for an assisted death--and why they persist in achieving the departure they desire.

The Day I Die will transform the way we think about agency and closure in the face of death. Its colorful characters remind us what we all stand to gain when we confront the hard--and yet ultimately liberating--truth of our mortality.

A macabre, spectacular, and thought-provoking survey of death in life, this book collects the many ways human remains are used in decorative, commemorative, and devotional contexts around the world today.

This compact edition of Memento Mori takes the reader on a ghoulish but beautiful tour of some of the world's more unusual sacred sites and traditions, in which human remains are displayed for the benefit of the living. From burial caves in Indonesia festooned with bones to skulls smoking cigarettes, wearing beanie hats and sunglasses, and decorated with garlands of flowers in South America, author Paul Koudounaris ventures beyond the grave to find messages of hope and salvation. His glorious color photographs and insightful commentaries reveal that in many places, the realms of the living and the dead are nowhere near so distinct as contemporary Western society would have us believe.

DISCONNECTED FROM DEATH
THE EVOLUTION OF FUNERARY CUSTOMS AND THE UNMAKING OF DEATH IN AMERICA
BY APRIL SLAUGHTER AND TROY TAYLOR

Americans have a complicated history with death - that final darkness at the end of life. Our ancestors dealt with death on a daily basis, dreaming up countless traditions and rituals to try and understand it. Society today, however, has disconnected from death. In years past, Americans died at home. Bodies were prepared for burial in our kitchens and funerals were held for our dead in the parlor. Now, we die under the sterile conditions of a hospital, far removed from the people who love us, and our death has become a business.

From the God-fearing Puritans to the aftermath of the Civil War, the Victorian descent into mourning to modern day funeral traditions, authors April Slaughter and Troy Taylor take the reader along on a journey through America's history with death, dying, and how they've shaped our society today. This is not a book about religion, or what happens to us after we die. This is a book that tries to connect our modern lives to the lives of those who had more than a passing acquaintance with death. Far too often, the traditions and rituals of the past have been presented as spooky or strange and, while some of them were unusual, all of them served a purpose. No matter how bizarre they might seem, they managed to present a vivid portrait of how we are all connected to death.

Death is - and always will be - a part of life and we hope this book will shed some light on the funeral customs, practices, and traditions of the past and how they have been changed, softened, and sterilized to make death seem like a distant stranger. Death was once a familial responsibility - a reality modern day American funeral directors would have you forget - but how did we become a nation so heavily dependent on them? What other options do we have? The answer is far more than you might have expected.

We may not be as close to death as our ancestors were, but we can assure you that it's still with us, waiting to take us by the hand and lead us into the unknown.