Few life events affect us more than the death of a loved one. At times, it can seem that grief is monolithic, but not every culture deals with death and grief in the same way. The death culture of the US endeavors to paint a pleasing facade over what we consider macabre. Embalmers camouflage the reality of the grave with chemicals and adornments. Cemeteries wall off the dead behind stone, concrete, and coffin wood. In her nonfiction book From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty delves into death cultures around the globe, thus casting a stark contrast between our national death avoidance and cultures that literally take death into their arms.

On her binge of thanotourism, Doughty investigated cultures in Belize, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, Spain, and Bolivia in addition to small enclaves within the United States. She found two striking commonalities between cultures that don’t deny or try to hide the inevitability of death, in other words, “death positive” cultures. The first is that these cultures live closely with the dead and are not afraid to touch their bodies or their relics. For example, the people of Tana Toraja, Indonesia celebrate ma’nene, during which they exhume the bodies of their loved ones to clean and commune with the mummies. In Bolivia, many households keep ñatitas, skulls of the dead believed to possess a sacred link with the divine. The second commonality is that, in death positive cultures, the living feel a sense of purpose in caring for the dead. In Mexico, during the famous Dia de los Muertos, families bring offerings to the graves of their loved ones to share a night with their returned spirits. Even in Japan, custom dictates that family members pick through the deceased’s ashes with chopsticks and deposit their bones into an urn.



Doughty brings the life of these cultures to the page with vivid details, some of which aren’t for the faint of heart. However, Doughty’s appealing, insightful, often sarcastic voice makes this morbid topic approachable. This clear writing prowess in combination with her experience as a Los Angeles mortician allow Doughty to make effective contrasts between American death culture and what she believes are healthier attitudes towards death. “In my practice as a mortician,” says Doughty, “I’ve found that both cleaning the body and spending time with it serves a powerful role in processing grief. It helps mourners see the corpse not as a cursed object, but as a beautiful vessel that once held their loved one.”

Despite her Anthony-Bordainesque adventures, Doughty’s message is clear: she wants her American readers to reassess not only how they view death but how they perform grief. She wants Americans to turn away from “business models, upselling families on mahogany caskets and marble headstones” but saving the talk of death until the last minute to a culture that speaks openly about death and honors our dead and our environment instead of building walls to protect ourselves from reality.


NOTE: I received a digital arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.


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3.5 stars

The author owns a funeral home in Los Angeles, but is a bit different in how she views death and burials. She is much more environmentally-conscious and would like for those of us in North America to be a little less… can’t think of a good word: uptight, maybe… about death. In this book, she travels to a few different places to see how various cultures deal with death. The places she visited include: Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, Japan, and Bolivia. She also “travels” to a couple of places in the U.S. where they do things a bit differently (as much as possible within the restrictive laws): Colorado and North Carolina. She ends back at home in California.

This was interesting. I actually found the research being done in North Carolina (re: green “burials” – actually “recomposting” of the bodies) not only the most interesting, but the most appealing for me. Caitlyn herself would like to be offered up to vultures, as in Tibet. I already know I’d like some kind of green burial, but I expect what type will depend on what’s “allowed” where I am when I die. Some of the more interesting cultural customs (for me) were in Mexico (Dias de los Muertos) and Bolivia (natitas). Like with her other books, there is a hint of humour there, as well (maybe less than with her other books, but still occasionally). And there were some great illustrations! ( )

From Here to Eternity is mostly what I expected after watching a few of Caitlin Doughty’s YouTube videos on deathcare practices. For those unfamiliar with her, I would describe her views on the funeral industry as “practical” and “eco-conscious”, and her delivery of information as bordering on darkly humorous. One footnote boasts that the author’s 2015 tax return involves a $666.00 write-off for a sacrificial pig, an offering required to view one of the covered rituals.

This book is a sort of world tour of non-Western views on burial, death, and the afterlife.

Indonesia, for example, revisits and engages with their mummified dead. Mexico has their Day of the Dead where gifts are offered to entice the spirits of the deceased to return among the living. Spain has a sterile, hands-off (behind glass walls) approach to viewing the deceased, whereas here, in Colorado I was surprised to learn, Americans are practicing borderline DIY cremations. Japan fuses spirituality with technology, including at their Buddha-filled columbarium where cremated remains are interred, and if you don’t know about vulture sky burial—it’s an interesting practice. In North Carolina, one can donate themselves to the study of corpse composting. It’s interesting that body farms used for scientific research are getting in on potential eco-friendly funeral practices, though this chapter, in particular, felt out of place.

From Here to Eternity lacks cohesion. I’m not sure if this is a book about spirituality, though several of the cultures described are firmly spiritually rooted, or if it’s about environmental impact, or if it’s about comfort with death and dying on a practical level; if it’s about grief processing or if it’s the exploitation of non-Western practices for the sake of Western death-tourism. I feel like much of the material is presented not for educational purposes but for shock value, and that the author’s usual presence—the uniqueness that endears her—is somewhat lost in print. Several of the chapters are written like encyclopedia entries, heavy with translations and procedure that slow the pace of the prose. There is a difference between informative and engaging, and this book walks the line. Several times I fought the urge to skim, which isn’t to say that those areas weren’t important to the book as a whole, but that the presentation was dry. I applaud the research and travel that went into creating From Here to Eternity but if I’m honest, only parts of it reflect the passion I have come to expect from an alt-industry leader. Interesting, but just not great. ( )

I love her channel; and this book, narrated by her, is more of that. ( )

As someone who has lost their fair share of friends and family members, as well as pets, almost exclusively to cancer, I’ve never really come to terms with how we, in the US, process death. A friend, who is currently going to school to be a mortician/funeral director, introduced me to Caitlin Doughty, an L. A. based mortician and founder of the Order of the Good Death, a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping people come to terms with their mortality and make decisions regarding the care and keeping of their body after they die.

These facts, when the book club picked it, made me a bit wary – I’m still not entirely at peace with my grandmother’s passing in the fall. I don’t like to talk about death. I don’t like to talk about dead bodies. I have difficulty with viewings and other death-related occasions. But, with an open mind, I started reading, with the hope that Caitlin would help me develop a better relationship one of the only facts about our lives on earth – they will end.

My husband often says he wants a Viking funeral, or a Tibetan Sky Burial, and each time he brings it up, I ask him to stop. I can’t stomach it. But Caitlin has gone all over the world, and her own country, exploring different cultures’ death rituals. And maybe it’s her writing, maybe it’s the distance, but it is absolutely fascinating! I really could not put From Here to Eternity – the travel aspect also helped me stomach the content. And at times, I cried, but for good reasons – Caitlin expertly goes back and forth between being detached and un-emotional, to feeling all the things when listening to her coworker recount the circumstances of the loss of her unborn son.

People die all the time, and she also goes into why cremation has become such a large part of the modern funeral industry, as well as the monopolies, corruption, and out-of-date laws that govern the industry in the US. To say I learned something would be a massive understatement. I was freaked out significantly less than I anticipated being while reading Packing for Mars last month. ( )