The Work of the Dead

This book represents the fruits of a four-decade-long interest in the history of the dead from one of our leading cultural historians. It is about how the dead were cared for, treated, memorialised and recorded. Thomas Laqueur’s theme is why the dead mattered in history and the part they played in the making of the modern world. His is an interdisciplinary study, drawing on literature, history, law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, theology and medicine—to name but a few. The book is wide-ranging in other senses: although its temporal focus is the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it deploys evidence from the dawn of time to the present day. Its geographical scope is also considerable: despite being (mostly) a study of the British dead, there is material here from Europe, America and the wider world. It is highly erudite: 557 pages of prose are reinforced by 120 pages of footnotes, many of which take the form of scholarly vignettes and commentary. Lastly, this is a work of enormous humanity, particularly in those parts of the book devoted to the tragedies of the twentieth century. This book, in sum, is a masterpiece in every sense of the word

Anthropological Studies and Insights · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · History · Philosophy