Death in the Modern World

Reviews / Votes

Tony Walter has written a highly recommendable book dealing with our society's continuous wrestling with the difficult topic of death. In a captivating, convincing and accessible manner, Walter shows how our way of 'doing' and dealing with death is impacted by changes in the many different conditions that shape our lives. -- Michael Hviid Jacobsen Death today is different from what it has been for all but a few hundred years of humanity's 250,000 years on our planet, and different even from what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Yet it is not the same everywhere. In this excellent book, Tony Walter describes death and its meanings in the modern world. He first discusses the factors that play on everyone living in advanced industrial and post-industrial economies. Then he turns to showing how cultures and nations build on their unique roots and how they change in response to wars, medical technologies, economic inequalities, globalization, and new communications media. Walter's thesis is complex, but he explains it in a clear, nuanced style that is a pleasure to read. Examples guide beginners, while interesting excursuses will appeal to the most seasoned scholars and clinicians. The book will make a good course text; at the same time, all academics and professionals who claim any expertise in death or grief will learn from it. -- Dennis Klass Bringing together a wider range of resources and contexts, Tony Walter's "Death in the Modern World" offers a refreshing account of the variable effects of modernity on death ways.
Stepping the reader through social factors (like money, war and religion) that shape the organisation and experience of dying and loss, Walter shows his hand as a longstanding leader in the field of death studies. -- Ruth McManus