From Here to Eternity

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.

Caitlin Doughty is a writer, documentarian, and death-industry reform advocate. She has written three New York Times bestsellers: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? and created the "Ask a Mortician" series. She lives in upstate New York.