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.

1437 | Hanyang

Crackdown

Choson Dynasty mourning etiquette.More

1833 | London

One or Two Heartbreakers

Some goodbyes are harder than others.More

c. 500 BC | Ephesus

Carted Off All the Same

The luckiest men die worthwhile deaths.More

Charts & Graphs

Last Words

The final statements of historical figures.

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Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

Color photograph of American writer Annie Dillard.

Color engraving of Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Petrarch.

Color photograph of American poet and critic Paul Zweig.

Painted portrait of Scottish philosopher David Hume.

Portrait of Chinese Daoist Zhuangzi.

Painting of Greek philosopher Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

I imagined it was more difficult to die.

—Louis XIV, 1715

Painted portrait of English physician and author Thomas Browne.

Color photograph of American poet and critic Paul Zweig.

Thomas Browne & Paul Zweig

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