When We Die : The Science, Culture, and Rituals of Death

By Cedric A. Mims

Book Overview

An unusually comprehensive study of death as both a social and scientific phenomenon, When We Die is as frank as it is informed. This far-reaching discussion considers mortality from the personal and the universal perspective, generously citing past and present poets and physicians from a diverse and telling range of traditions. Mims, who for two decades served as Professor of Microbiology at London's Guys Hospital, brings a humane, inquisitive, and learned sensibility to his topic. "This book is a light-hearted but wide-ranging survey of death, the causes of death, and the disposal ofcorpses," writes Mims. "It tells why we die and how we die, and what happens to the dead body and its bits and pieces. It describes the ways corpses are dealt with in different religions and in different parts of the world; the methods for preserving bodies; and the ways - fascinating in their diversity - in which corpses or parts of corpses are used and abused." The volume also explores such crucial death-based notions as the afterlife, the soul, and the prospect of immortality. By way of the book's main focus, Mims continues: "We should take a more matter-of-fact view of death [and] accept it and talk about it more than we do - as we have done with the once taboo subject of sex." This is a work that any student of social anthropology will find equally enlightening and essential.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312264119
• ISBN13: 9780312264116
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.7" x 1.1" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Captivating!

This literary work is fascinating. It covers so many areas in a concise yet thorogh manner. Almost addictive reading. Mims takes an obscured subject and breathes into it a new retrospect.

The Great Taboo Exposed

Death is one of the great taboo subjects- you can't get the real story because no one wants to speak frankly bout it. The subject is just to profound. You feel like a teenager trying to find out what sex means. You eventually find out what that means thru study and experimentation-separating fact from fiction. But with death you only get to experiment 1 time-hard to separate wheat from chafe. If you have an interest in life's 2nd greatest landmark(after birth), I couldn't recommend this book more. Mr Mims is a very entertaining writer and seems to cover every imaginable aspect of death. His style is staight talking, stripping the subject of it's mystery. Some of things he covers include the mechanics of dying and burial, forms of suicide, what most people can expect to die of, how death is different that sleep, the hazards of immortality, how embalming works, forms of mummification,crime & how rhe police obtain clues from corpses,the religious side death, and the possibility of the after life. I know this sounds pretty deep but it's very readable. Of particular interest were these little side articles...human relics in Christian Churches(8 churches claim to have Jesus' foreskin),the commercial use of Egyptian mummies in the 19th century, the body snatchers of England,and human sacrifice among the Aztecs. It's an excellent book.

Don't fear the reaper.

This book is wonderful. I learned something on every page. If you read one book on death this year, read this one. Better than an episode of Quincy.