Book : From Here To Eternity Traveling The World To Find The

-Titulo Original : From Here To Eternity Traveling The World To Find The Good Death

-Fabricante :

W. W. Norton & Company

-Descripcion Original:

A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity.Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America.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.With boundless curiosity and gallows humor, 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 Dias 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 to a mortuary, pumped full of chemicals, and entombed in concrete. She argues that our expensive, impersonal system fosters a corrosive fear of death that hinders our ability to cope and mourn. By comparing customs, she demonstrates that mourners everywhere respond best when they help care for the deceased, and have space to participate in the process.Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a story about the many fascinating ways people everywhere have confronted the very human challenge of mortality. 45 illustrations From School Library Journal Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death, a nonprofit organization that advocates for natural burial and reducing the stigma around death, describes funereal rituals around the world while stopping to reflect on U.S. practices. In Indonesia, for instance, the Toraja keep the dead at home for several months or years until the funeral. The author also explores the North Carolinas FOREST facility, which composts corpses, and the Crestone End of Life, a Colorado nonprofit that performs open-air cremations. Doughty shares her reverence for the dead while poking fun at our fears (gross as it sounds, Id come back from the dead for a Diet Coke). She forces U.S. readers to confront the secretive and profitable mortuary business and sheds light on cultures that celebrate death. If death is inevitable, she asks, why are we afraid to address it? As the Bolivians look to their natitas (special human skulls), we can look to them for a level of comfort and familiarity with death. How would your ancestors deal with tragedy? Probably not with a $10,000 check to take a dead body away. VERDICT Recommend this fascinating and well-written book to fans of Mary Roachs Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.-Pamela Schembri, Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, NY Review Doughty is a relentlessly curious and chipper tour guide to the underworld, and the weirder things get, the happier she seems. … [H]er dispatches from the dark side [are] doing us all a kindness offering a picture of what we’re in for, even if we’d rather not know. Libby Copeland, New York Times Book ReviewDoughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief. Jill Lepore, The New YorkerDoughty writes bluntly about open-air cremations, natural burials and body composting, bringing a little more clarity and a little less mystery to the question: What happens to us after we die? NPR (Our Guide to 2017s Great Reads)[T]he ma