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Title details for From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty - Available

From Here to Eternity

Traveling the World to find the Good Death

by Caitlin Doughty
Caitlin Doughty
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
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 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. Author bio: Mortician Caitlin Doughty—host and creator of "Ask a Mortician" and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes—founded the death acceptance collective The Order of the Good Death and co-founded Death Salon. She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs her nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking LA.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 3, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781501973932
      • File size: 162004 KB
      • Duration: 05:37:30

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 2, 2017
      Mortician Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) catalogues rituals and cultural practices surrounding death from all over the world in this fantastic memoir, which is intended to “help us reclaim meaning and tradition in our own community.” Doughty, a mortician who doesn’t abide by typical American funeral protocols of embalming quickly and upselling products, relates practices—glass display cases in funeral homes in Barcelona, natural (casket-free) burials in Los Angeles, a mummified family member hanging out in an Indonesian living room for years before being buried— that will inspire readers to reconsider familiar rituals surrounding death. Doughty also explores the increasing corporatization of death and the growing popularity (and carbon footprint) of cremation. With humor and snappy descriptions, she also gleefully punches holes in Western misconceptions and prejudices concerning death rituals in other countries, as when a travel guide snubbed as a “ghoulish spectacle” the intricate, beautiful bamboo cages used in Bali for decomposition. Doughty’s skillful book will encourage debate on philosophical and moral preferences for posthumous care. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Ross Yoon.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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