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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The Afternoon Meal, by Luis Meléndez, c. 1772

Last Meals

By Brent Cunningham

The choice of the final meal contains a curious paradox: why mark the end of a life with the stuff that fuels it?

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Map

Departures

A million ways to die.

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Miscellany

Crested ducks are known to perform acts of cannibalism, mallards acts of necrophilia.

c. 500 | Persia

To the Dogs and the Birds

The Zoroastrian way of death.More

1927 | Charlestown, MA

The Day Will Come

Bartolomeo Vanzetti goes on the record.More

c. 1573 | Aquitaine

Living at Life’s Expense

Montaigne considers death and life.More

Charts & Graphs

Body Snatchers

The plundering of famous corpses.

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Photograph of American editor Brent Cunningham.

Black and white image of English philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill.

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

Photograph of American science writer Virginia Morell with dog.

Portrait bust of Greek dramatist Aeschylus.

Color photograph of Russian multimillionaire Dmitry Itskov.

The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC

Painted portrait of Scottish philosopher David Hume.

Color photograph of American physician Jack Kevorkian.

David Hume & Jack Kevorkian

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