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.
I am FASCINATED by Caitlin Doughty’s vision of a good death… Her first book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, was an incredible eye-opener for me, and this second book confirmed the conclusions I reached after reading and thinking about the earlier work: we have an unhealthy and unrealistic concept of death in the “civilized” world, and as a result, death affects the way we live much more than it has to. In this book, Doughty travels the world (literally) examining death practices, and learns about methods of attending to the living as she does to the dead. The stories are fascinating, as are the realizations she achieves – and helpfully points out – throughout the course of her travels. I hope she continues to write on this topic (she also has videos/podcasts, but that’s not my metier) – she is an excellent writer who makes the concept of death completely accessible and far less scary than I would have imagined, and I find her books thoroughly engaging, thought-provoking, and entertaining.
This story is told by the author about her global travels to explore death rituals in different countries. She discovers different customs all over the world and how American funeral rituals compare. She comes to the realization that the most effective rituals are when the family is directly involved. Caitlin tells story after story of the people she encountered and gives the reader a new view on how different parts of the world view mortality.
This is Caitlin’s second book and I was so excited to find it. I read her first one (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes) and was captivated. She is an excellent story teller and her encounters are fascinating. She shows that there is no wrong way to mourn a loved one, or bury a loved one. She tries to show that embracing the fear of death and burial and asking for what you want. Caitlyn keeps things light hearted and witty and lead me to some serious introspection.
She is amazing. Her books are excellent. And I encourage you to read them all.
5 stars – I loved it!
Filled with humor and highly detailed accounts of her travels, this book takes us around the world to look at different cultures’ death practices and how they cope with death. She relates these practices back to the United States practices and uses them as teaching tools to show how disconnected our culture is about death and the dead.
“Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it’s a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals—funeral directors, cemetery managers, hospital workers. It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible.”
This is a very educational and informative book that makes you rethink your views on death, burial, and grief. As always, I love Doughty’s writing and approach to discussing death. It’s informative and slightly humorous, but also gentle considering the topic. She has a great way of making the difficult topic of death fun and removing the uncertainty and fear it can cause.
“All that surrounds us comes from death, every part of every city, and every part of every person.”
I really enjoyed this book because it took us all around the world to learn about different death practices. It was fascinating seeing how other cultures deal with their dead, especially when it came to the sky burials and the Bolivian natitas.
“Why do we refuse to have these conversations, asking our family and friends what they want done with their body when they die? Our avoidance is self-defeating. By dodging the talk about our inevitable end, we put both our pocketbooks and our ability to mourn at risk.”
This is technically the second time I have read this book and it was just as fascinating and enjoyable as it was the first time. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in death practices around the world. Also the audiobook was fantastic since it was narrated by the author and made it seem like a long episode of Ask a Mortician, just without the video.
Trigger Warnings:
– Miscarriage, child deaths, and grief
– Animal deaths
From Here to Eternity
Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
By: Caitlin Doughty
Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
The author traveled around various countries and described the countries way of treating their dead, their thoughts on death, and how it may have changed. She compares these countries to the US. It was very interesting, a little strange from the view from an American. I do see how we have lost sight of the respect of the ritual of death and the big business of funeral homes have made it impersonal and costly. I love her books. I have read all three now and love her website. She did a remarkable job with the narration.
This was such an interesting listen! I have been wanting to read this book since I learned of its existence. I find the way that we handle death as humans to be a topic that I never tire from. When I first picked up Caitlin Doughty’s debut novel, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, I had my doubts but decided to read a few pages just to see what I thought. I couldn’t put it down and it is a book that I frequently recommend to others today. I went into this audiobook with pretty high expectations and I am thrilled that the book was able to meet them.
In this book, the author travels the world to see how death is handled in a variety of cultures. It was a very eye-opening journey for me. I had no idea how little I actually knew about this topic. I thought that in the United States the options for dealing with a loved one’s remains consisted of a choice between burial and cremation. I had no idea that in one community, residents have the option of an open-air pyre. Why don’t we have this everywhere?
I was amazed by the variety of customs associated with dying. In this book, we see communities that keep the corpses of loved ones with them for rather long periods of time continuing their relationship with the deceased. There were a variety of rituals from around the world explained. Some of the scenes were quite vivid. While I don’t think that I want to rush to practice some of the traditions explained in this book, I really liked being able to see how variations of how people around the world look at the process of death. In some ways, I think that a lot of cultures have a much healthier relationship with the dead. They prepare the bodies and care for the dead while in the United States, we are removed from the process leaving it to the professionals.
This book is narrated by the author. I think that she did a great job with the reading of this book. The book covers things and events that the author has seen so I think that she was able to deliver the story in a manner that nobody else would have been able to do. I thought that she had a very pleasant voice and I found it easy to listen to this book for long periods of time. I ended up listening to the entire book in a single day and found that I liked the narration more and more as I made my way through the book.
I would recommend this book to others. I love the way that this author is able to educate others on the process of death and dying in an entertaining manner. I found this book to be quite thought-provoking and I feel like I learned a thing or two. I could easily see myself reading this book again at some point in the future and I can’t wait to check out some of the author’s other works.
I really liked it. It gave me a different view on our funeral practices.