DINA KHAPAEVA has written a wonderfully interesting book about a subject most of us would rather not think about, much less devote years of our lives to studying: death. Hers is, fundamentally, an anti-death book. Wait, don’t stop reading — it’s not a live-forever diet, yoga, or genetic engineering manifesto. Rather, it’s an attempt to help us save ourselves from a new cultural cult of death. Khapaeva warns that our culture in general, and young people in particular, are succumbing to the temptation to dwell with death rather than in life. She believes it’s a revolution, and in a sense it is. She poses an interesting question: “Why […] in this time of unparalleled longevity in the West, do we observe […] an obsessive fascination with death?” I’ll argue that the answer may be contained in her question. But first, what is the evidence for the revolution? After tracing the origins of death-centered thinking to certain French intellectuals, Khapaeva details “the commodification of death,...
