From here to eternity

traveling the world to find the good death (Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction)

No cover

From here to eternity (2018)

295 pages

English language

Published April 12, 2018

ISBN:
9781432848538
OCLC Number:
1010700788

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5 stars (1 review)

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes. Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world's funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico's Días de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light. Doughty contends that the American funeral industry sells a particular -- and, upon close inspection, peculiar -- set of 'respectful' rites: bodies are whisked …

7 editions

Subjects

  • Cross-cultural studies
  • Death
  • Funeral rites and ceremonies
  • Undertakers and undertaking
  • Travel
  • Bereavement