You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.77k reviews for:
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Caitlin Doughty
4.32 AVERAGE
3.77k reviews for:
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Caitlin Doughty
4.32 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
informative
fast-paced
This book is interesting and informative. It covers death practices from around the world. I would've rated this much higher, but Caitlin frequently intones her opinion regarding these practices. A humorous contradiction is how she praises foreign practices and eschews judgement, but then turns around and hands down judgement upon her own culture's death customs. An example of this is saying her own culture is too afraid of the uncleanness of bodies, but then praising Japanese death culture without chiding their strong fear of bodies. I prefer books that portray cultures impartially and let the reader draw conclusions.
In addition to this, Caitlin writes like a millennial. She tries to make little jokes and weave in travel anecdotes during her trips exploring these death customs. To me, this seems like a blog post writing style, not a serious presentation of cultures.
Overall, solid book worth reading, despite lackluster execution.
In addition to this, Caitlin writes like a millennial. She tries to make little jokes and weave in travel anecdotes during her trips exploring these death customs. To me, this seems like a blog post writing style, not a serious presentation of cultures.
Overall, solid book worth reading, despite lackluster execution.
If you are even a little morbidly curious and are okay with tasteful descriptions of corpse-handling practices, you’ll definitely enjoy this book and learn a lot from it! Caitlin Doughty is a mortician with a very well-deserved following for her work in normalizing death and dead bodies through her YouTube series, ‘Ask a Mortician’, as well as three books.
In this book, Doughty travels around the world to investigate how other cultures approach death and care for their deceased. She visits all sorts of different funeral and burial services, observes rituals, and conducts interviews with death professionals to gain insight on different death practices. In total, she visits 6 countries as well as two states in the U.S., all of whom regard their dead with deep respect and who aim for their transition to the afterlife to be done with dignity.
Doughty discusses a couple places in the US that are exploring alternative send-offs, such as the open-air funeral pyre in Colorado and the ‘body farms’ (human compost) in North Carolina. There are other cultures, such as on the island of Sulawel in Indonesia, where the dead are mummified to an immaculate degree and their bodies stay in the homes of their families. There are sky funerals in Tibet where the dead are offered in small pieces to carrion birds who then take them up to the sky. In Spain, burial plots are temporary, only belonging to someone as long as their body is around; as soon as they decompose, a new body takes its place. In Japan, 99.9% of the deceased are cremated. It turns out there’s tons of ways to get your loved ones to the other side, and neither is any more or less favorable than another.
Doughty is really just out here trying to change the world and offer new perspectives on death acceptance and having a healthy relationship with grief. She isn’t afraid to call out how deathphobic we are in the U.S. and how corrupt and corporatized our funeral industry is. She points out how the pressure that is often put on mourning families often gets in the way of them getting the goodbye they/their loved ones would have wanted. In a way some of it isn’t even our fault; there are so many federal restrictions in place in most parts of the U.S. that dictate how we handle our dead, which is worse when you consider Indigenous people and how that impacts centuries-long death practices.
I recommend the audiobook *and* the physical book; Doughty narrates the audiobook and has the best speaking voice, and the physical book has some great accompanying illustrations by Landis Blair. I love Doughty’s sensitivity and how she uses thoughtful, intentional language to avoid making any one culture’s practices seem ‘weird’ or wrong. She opens up the space for us to positively engage with something that we all try excessively hard not to think about. I need her to help me normalize *everything* that scares me, because she’s just so good at it!!
In this book, Doughty travels around the world to investigate how other cultures approach death and care for their deceased. She visits all sorts of different funeral and burial services, observes rituals, and conducts interviews with death professionals to gain insight on different death practices. In total, she visits 6 countries as well as two states in the U.S., all of whom regard their dead with deep respect and who aim for their transition to the afterlife to be done with dignity.
Doughty discusses a couple places in the US that are exploring alternative send-offs, such as the open-air funeral pyre in Colorado and the ‘body farms’ (human compost) in North Carolina. There are other cultures, such as on the island of Sulawel in Indonesia, where the dead are mummified to an immaculate degree and their bodies stay in the homes of their families. There are sky funerals in Tibet where the dead are offered in small pieces to carrion birds who then take them up to the sky. In Spain, burial plots are temporary, only belonging to someone as long as their body is around; as soon as they decompose, a new body takes its place. In Japan, 99.9% of the deceased are cremated. It turns out there’s tons of ways to get your loved ones to the other side, and neither is any more or less favorable than another.
Doughty is really just out here trying to change the world and offer new perspectives on death acceptance and having a healthy relationship with grief. She isn’t afraid to call out how deathphobic we are in the U.S. and how corrupt and corporatized our funeral industry is. She points out how the pressure that is often put on mourning families often gets in the way of them getting the goodbye they/their loved ones would have wanted. In a way some of it isn’t even our fault; there are so many federal restrictions in place in most parts of the U.S. that dictate how we handle our dead, which is worse when you consider Indigenous people and how that impacts centuries-long death practices.
I recommend the audiobook *and* the physical book; Doughty narrates the audiobook and has the best speaking voice, and the physical book has some great accompanying illustrations by Landis Blair. I love Doughty’s sensitivity and how she uses thoughtful, intentional language to avoid making any one culture’s practices seem ‘weird’ or wrong. She opens up the space for us to positively engage with something that we all try excessively hard not to think about. I need her to help me normalize *everything* that scares me, because she’s just so good at it!!
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
I love watching Caitlin, and this audiobook felt very similar. A really great comparison of different culture's perception and traditions around death. I was pleasantly surprised to learn things about my own culture.