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

by Caitlin Doughty, Landis Blair (Illustrator)

Overview

A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller

“Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393356281
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? She is the creator of the web series Ask a Mortician, and the founder of The Order of the Good Death. She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she owns a funeral home.

Landis Blair illustrated the prize-winning graphic novel The Hunting Accident and the New York Times bestseller From Here to Eternity, and has published illustrations in the New York Times, Chicago magazine, and Medium. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

…Doughty is a relentlessly curious and chipper tour guide to the underworld, and the weirder things get, the happier she seems…American death practices, she writes, have become brief, distant and sterile. Doughty takes readers around the globe in search of alternative rituals and doesn't hold back on the gory details…Doughty is a likable, witty companion…It is a difficult high-wire act: to make death interesting and funny enough that we'll drop our fears and read, without losing sight of the gravity of the topic. The entertaining adventures are a cover for an attempt at a profound cultural subversion, and for the most part, it works. I couldn't help thinking that her dispatches from the dark side were doing us all a kindness—offering a picture of what we're in for, even if we'd rather not know.

The New York Times Book Review - Libby Copeland

"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 Review

"Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief."— Jill Lepore The New Yorker

"Doughty 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 2017's Great Reads)

"[T]he macabre travelogue is a thoughtful reflection and a smart critique of the American funeral industry, with plenty of gallows humor thrown in."— Smithsonian (The Ten Best Travel Books of 2017)

"Doughty finds the humanity in others cultures' relationship with death that seems to be lacking in ours."— Justin Caffier Vice

"This slim volume, full of captivating, enlightening, and humorous tidbits, is a—dare I say—uplifting exploration of what people the world over do to withstand loss and the bite of impermanence. This is death as viewed by a mortician: profound, unavoidable, natural, and a bit funny."— KQED

"This humane book gently provokes you to wonder: what exactly is your ideal funeral?"— The Times

"From Here To Eternity is fascinating, thought-provoking and – who would have guessed? – sometimes funny. Put it on your bucket list."— The Mail

"Caitlin Doughty is razor sharp, and writes about death with exceptional clarity and style. From Here to Eternity manages to be both an extremely funny travelogue and a deeply moving book about what death means to us all."— Dylan Thuras, co-founder of Atlas Obscura

"[Doughty’s] fascinating tour of rituals contains liturgies that readers will surely observe as rare, macabre, unbelievable, ancient, and precious—sometimes simultaneously."— Kirkus

"She is the ideal guide on this journey, curious and respectful...Recommended for fans of the author and those with an interest in anthropology and ritual."— Library Journal

"A thought-provoking book about the complicated, fascinating world of funerary practices. Unless you and your friends are immortal, this book pertains to you."— A. J. Jacobs

"In her jocular but reverential tone…
Doughty doesn’t offer a simple morbid travelogue;

instead, she digs
into diverse death experiences with deep veneration and examines ties to
socioeconomic, status, female identity, and religion."— Booklist

From the Publisher

2017-07-12
In the follow-up to her well-received debut, Smoke Gets in your Eyes (2014), a mortician delivers a wide-eyed report on burial customs across the world.At the unique funeral parlor she owns and operates in Southern California, Doughty adopts a "younger, progressive" approach to burial protocol. Unwilling to accept the way that the necessity of "deathcare" has evolved into such a commercialized and bureaucratic industry, the inquisitive undertaker presents her globe-trotting experiences exploring and appreciating the eccentric and widely diverse death rituals across international cultures. In offering opposing perspectives that dignify, celebrate, and decorate the body in its expired state, Doughty hopes to do her part in spurring a reform of the funeral industry and to help change the squeamishness of Western attitudes toward death and the sanctity of the sacred burial. Her fascinating tour of rituals contains liturgies that readers will surely observe as rare, macabre, unbelievable, ancient, and precious—sometimes simultaneously. Among them: a Central American body thief validates why he confiscated his grandmother's body from a hospital; a cremation via community open-air pyre in Colorado (the only one of its kind in America), complete with flute and didgeridoo accompaniment; mummification restorations in Indonesia; and the glass encasement coffins of Barcelona: "Glass means transparency, unclouded confrontation with the brutal reality of death. Glass also means a solid barrier. It allows you to come close but never quite make contact." In Japan, where corpses were once perceived to be impure, now they are revered as beloved and their memorialization has been fully ritualized with the aid of technology and innovation. Green, eco-friendly "human composting" methods also have their place in the author's entertaining and thought-provoking narrative. Grimly enhanced by the artwork of Blair, these observances demonstrate how to diminish the stigma associated with death, burial, and eternal remembrance. Death gets the last word in this affably written, meticulously researched study of funerary customs.

Kirkus Reviews