Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous & the Notorious

by Alix Strauss

Overview

Kurt Cobain, Anne Sexton, Mark Rothko, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Hitler . . . all famous, some rich and powerful, some beloved, some abhorred. But when life and circumstance got to be too much, each headed for the exit door. Sigmund Freud overdosed on morphine. Dorothy Dandridge stripped naked and swallowed a handful of antidepressants. Hunter S. Thompson shot himself while talking to his wife on the phone.

These are the lonely personal nightmares behind celebrity suicides—the deaths and their causes are as diverse as the victims themselves. In Death Becomes Them, Alix Strauss bids each one a final good-bye while examining the last days and the unbearable incidents that drove these notables to end their lives. She decodes their notes, touches on their accomplishments, and delves into the methodologies of their deaths using autopsy and police reports and personal photos. Strauss also explores the morbid curiosity that feeds our fixation with famously tortured souls and provides lists of other controversial, bizarre, and poorly executed suicides in this mammoth tome.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061959356
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/17/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	354
Sales rank:	580,438
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Alix Strauss is a lifestyle trend writer who appears on national morning and talk shows. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Time, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. She is the author of The Joy of Funerals, Have I Got a Guy for You, and Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious.

What People are Saying About This

Jerry Stahl

“A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night. ”

A.J. Jacobs

“Dark, grisly, and completely fascinating. I almost felt guilty for so thoroughly enjoying this look at history’s most tormented souls.”

Michael Largo

“Strauss brilliantly exposes the devilry in the details and makes the profoundly moving, self-inflicted end-days of the greats a fascinating read.”

Rona Jaffe

“A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night. ”

Editorial Reviews

Adolf Hitler and Virginia Woolf; Mark Rothko and Kurt Cobain. These people and the other celebrities in this book shared only two things: their fame and their suicides. Alix Strauss' Death Becomes Them doesn't prove its title claim, but it does keep us rapt with its all-too-true tales of final exits.

For those who never miss the obits, this odd little compendium of true suicide stories from author Strauss (The Joy of Funerals, Have I Got a Guy for You) may scratch a certain itch. Focusing mainly on creative types-writers, actors, musicians and artists-Strauss strikes a genial tone infused with plenty of gallows humor; Sylvia Plath's tale is amended with a breezy sidebar on the troubled poet's method of self-execution, an oven fueled by coal gas: "Cheaper than pills, easier than hanging, and less messy than the remnants from a gunshot, death by coal was quick, painless, and, most important, easily accessible." Strauss's giddy enthusiasm for the topic manifests in easy jokes and glib chapter titles ("Not the Suite Life: Ten Hotel Suicides"), as well as lists of facts that read dangerously close to DIY instruction. One can almost forgive the relentlessly upbeat tone, however, as the book proves hopelessly dreary, even for the most morbid of tabloid-readers.
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Publishers Weekly

A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night.

Rona Jaffe

Strauss brilliantly exposes the devilry in the details and makes the profoundly moving, self-inflicted end-days of the greats a fascinating read.

Michael Largo

Dark, grisly, and completely fascinating. I almost felt guilty for so thoroughly enjoying this look at history’s most tormented souls.

A.J. Jacobs

A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night.

Jerry Stahl

A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night. ” — Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

“Dark, grisly, and completely fascinating. I almost felt guilty for so thoroughly enjoying this look at history’s most tormented souls.” — A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year Of Living Biblically

“Strauss brilliantly exposes the devilry in the details and makes the profoundly moving, self-inflicted end-days of the greats a fascinating read.” — Michael Largo, author of Genuis and Heroin

“A truly unique, compelling and strangely life-affirming work of literary investigation. The perfect book to get you through the night. ” — Rona Jaffe, author of The Room-Mating Season, among others

From the Publisher