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...

Unearth the rich-- and often, dark-- history of funeral rites. From getting a portrait painted with a loved one's ashes to purchasing a safety coffin complete with bells and breathing tubes, Benjamin takes you on a whirlwind tour of funeral customs and trivia from all over the globe.

Killing a bird with his slingshot as a boy, William Bellman grows up a wealthy family man unaware of how his act of childhood cruelty will have terrible consequences until a wrenching tragedy compels him to enter into a macabre bargain with a stranger in black.

While battling lymphoma, Clark has discovered a burgeoning movement that uses burial to conserve and restore natural areas, forgoing typical funeral practices that stress the ecosystem. Boldly facing his mortality, Clark and his partner Jane have become passionate about green burial, compelled by both the environmental benefits and the idea that one can remain within the cycle of life, rather than being cut off from it.