From Here to Eternity

Caitlin Doughty, a mortician fascinated by the fear of dead bodies, travels the world to see how other cultures look after their dead. In rural Indonesia, Doughty watches a man tend his grandfather's mummified body, which has stayed at home with the family for two years; natitas, skulls said to grant wishes, greet her in La Paz; in Tokyo she sees relatives lift bones from cremation ashes with chopsticks. She also profiles people developing body composting and green burial. Doughty argues that the American funeral industry, with chemical embalming and concrete tombs, feeds a fear of death that makes grieving harder, and that mourners do best when they help care for the body. Landis Blair supplied the illustrations.

Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras endorsed it, praising Doughty's clarity about death and calling it both a very funny travelogue and a moving reflection on what death means to people.