From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

ISBN: 0393356280

Author: Doughty, Caitlin

Condition: New

A New York Times and Los Angeles Times BestsellerDoughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technicians fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief. -Jill Lepore, The New YorkerFascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the worlds funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry-especially chemical embalming-and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality. 45 illustrations