کتاب From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death - نقد و نظرات دربارۀ کتاب From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

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. 45 illustrations

I'm very uncomfortable with the subject of death. So uncomfortable that almost every phobia I have has something to do with death. So reading this -kind of- lighthearted book was an attempt in making myself comfortable with the subject and eventually be a little bit less panicked about it all the time! Having to see how other cultures, like Indonesia and Mexico, dealt with death and how ignorant they were toward it, ignorant meaning they didn't let death interfer with their day to day life or keep them away from their passed loved ones by any means, not only made me see death in another way, in a way that is less scary, but also really challenged me to keep an open mind about death rituals which believe me got tricky at times! This book also explains how, different kinds of death rituals can have an impact on the way we process and accept death and how the funeral industry in West is making death something big, something unnatural, something that should be cured and something that is scary. And provides some plausible solutions for this matter. However, I was not a fan of her writing which felt boring and plain at some points and kept me from enjoying some of the cultures mentioned in the book which could've been really interesting otherwise!