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

New

17,50 

by Caitlin Doughty, Landis Blair (Illustrator)

The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with “dignity.”

1 in stock

Description

Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones’ bones from cremation ashes.

With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning—including a glowing-Buddha columbarium in Japan and America’s only open-air pyre—and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.

Additional information

Book Condition

New

Cover

Paperback

Size

256 pages

Published

October 9, 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
First published October 3, 2017

Genre

Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Science, Travel

Awards

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2017)