Death's Summer Coat: What the History of Death and Dying Teaches Us About Life and Living

Schillace (managing editor of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry) raises the issue of the avoidance of mortality in Western culture. Through a historical-anthropological framework, she considers grief rituals in non-Western cultures and presents a selective history of Western approaches to death. Throughout this work, the focus is on death as event and process and on the act of grieving as a rite of passage. Moreover, the author's approach to Western history is haphazard, jumping from the Black Death to the Protestant Reformation to the Victorians. After the 19th century, religious rituals for death and dying are hardly mentioned. Instead, the book's concentration shifts to the role of doctors as priests in the "sanitized" dying process of today. Schillace concludes by exploring options for "rehumanizing" death through the creation of new customs. She considers briefly the emerging role of hospices and natural funerary practices; however, this section is sparse, with few suggestions.