The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Death

Volume VI, Number 4 | fall 2013

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"The Antiquary's Last Will and Testament" from The English Dance of Death, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1814.

Preamble

Memento Mori

By Lewis H. Lapham

Learning how to die, as Michel de Montaigne once rightly said, is the unlearning of how to be a slave.

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Fond Farewells

By Bess Lovejoy

Jessica Mitford’s An American Way of Death took down an industry few people knew about, but that everyone would one day need.

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Map

Departures

A million ways to die.

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Miscellany

C. S. Lewis was sixty-four, John F. Kennedy forty-six, and Aldous Huxley sixty-nine at the times of their deaths—all within an eight-hour span on November 22, 1963.

1889 | New York City

Mistakes Were Made

A guide to avoiding premature burial. More

1833 | London

One or Two Heartbreakers

Some goodbyes are harder than others.More

1390 | Japan

Walking in Circles

The dangers of thinking too much.More

Charts & Graphs

Instruments of Death

Tools used for capital punishment.

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Black and white photograph of French writer and film director Marguerite Duras.

Painted portrait of English physician and author Thomas Browne.

Photograph of President Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair.

Black and white photograph of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Color portrait of Greek poet Anacreon.

Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.

—Jean Paul, 1795

Black and white photograph of English writer Virginia Woolf.

Black and white photograph of French writer and film director Marguerite Duras.

Virginia Woolf & Marguerite Duras

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