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The Work of the Dead : A Cultural History of Mortal Remains by Thomas Walter Laqueur is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Work of the Dead : A Cultural History of Mortal Remains about?

The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In __The Work of the Dead__, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters—for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, __The Work of the Dead__ offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century. The book draws on a vast range of sources—from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have co

Who reads The Work of the Dead : A Cultural History of Mortal Remains?

Author

Thomas Walter Laqueur

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published

2015

Language

EN

ISBN

9780691157788

Category

history

Subjects

History, Sociology, Anthropology

Rating

4.5 / 5 (65 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14