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A Social History of Dying is an informational, useful book that's impact is diminished by its lack of organization and structure. It serves more as a compilation, or a catalogue, of sociological information (most of it having to do with death and dying) rather than a straightforward book about the history of dying. This, if the book was organized better, would have worked better in its favor.

First, the positives: The information Kellehear puts out and the opinions he posits are both very intriguing, especially the progression of the ‘kinds' of deaths that are conceptualized. Furthermore, I appreciate the inclusion of different perspectives, cultures, and traditions in his analyses of society. A common criticism I've seen is that he makes sweeping generalizations of humanity and this critique, to me, seems unfounded. The inability to make specifications is an inherent problem seen with topics like sociology and philosophy, which is why the effort Kellehear made to include all kinds of cultures is appreciated. It's difficult to write on the humanities without making generalizations, especially with a topic so universal yet divisive as death.

His general message in his conclusion about care and compassion being a human instinct is a good one. Too often do people think that humanity is inherently selfish or skewed towards unstable power dynamics.

This is also good in addressing how things like capitalism and colonization affects certain aspects of death and dying. The former is especially stressed in relevant chapters.

Now, the negatives: Again, I don't believe that Kellehear adding a wider context to this book is necessarily bad. The problem herein lies with the fact that his lack of structure causes the background information to be less supplemental and more distracting. His tangents don't seem to be contained, and are sprinkled in here and there. I would have found several chapters on background information and then several chapters on the main point to be much easier to read. The organization — or lack thereof — made reading hard to sludge through sometimes, especially with chapters filled with background information such as Part II and III. This one flaw made it drastically harder to read and, as seen with other reviews, made others quit entirely within the first few chapters. I would have definitely finished this a lot quicker had it not been for this.

Overall, it's a good read, but I would only really recommend it to people who are really interested in death studies and aren't too bothered by extra details. A summary of all his ideas — which I would say are still thought-provoking — are listed in the conclusion, so if you're unsure about reading all of it, it might be good to read just the conclusion.

You don't love anything or anyone, you don't even love the difference you think you embody. All you know is the grace of the bodies of the dead, the grace of those like yourself.

Duras's writing style in The Malady of Death is dreamlike and poetic, purposefully the bones of a story. She writes what is needed and leaves the rest up for interpretation. Though the story is written in second person, it's remarkably evident that you, the reader, is a passive observer to the “you” in the story — and perhaps that evokes a stronger emotional response.

Helpful to read in the context of the heteropatriarchy, especially with the trope of the manic pixie dream girl. In a way, this short story is a wonderful subversion of that.

In this book, Khapaeva discusses the cultural change in celebrating and commodifying death and death-based aesthetics, such as vampirism and Halloween. She compares reception of these topics in America and Russia, using references and media from both as supplements to her point. While I disagree with the notion of humanity being inherently death-denying, a lot of her points had merit. Her view on humanism and how nonhuman entities reject human exceptionalism was interesting, as is the idea that this led to dehumanization and desensitization of human death.

However, I quickly lost interest when she began analyzing Harry Potter and its impact. While I can't doubt its cultural impact, I believe Khapaeva did a poor job at communicating its relevancy. Particularly troubling was the demonization of mental illnesses — specifically, the labelling of Harry as a “deranged maniac” after explaining his psychotic symptoms. Khapaeva argues that the demonization of these psychotic symptoms in “wizard culture” in the series means that it can't serve as a therapeutic tool in reality, which completely misses the idea that children seeing a protagonist be famed as a hero while still struggling with psychotic symptoms could be comforting. On a smaller scale, the usage of the outdated “multiple personality disorder” instead of “dissociative identity disorder” was telling. Generally, I thought this portion delving into Harry Potter's mental state was unnecessary and in poor taste, especially because the series should have been brought up solely due to its themes of death and how it affects humanism and human exceptionalism.

The beginning part is strong, and still has important information that I enjoyed reading through, but the section about Harry Potter should have been shorter than it is. Most of the information there was irrelevant at best and damaging at worst.

Well organized and had some good ideas. I have some issues with touting capitalism as the most progressive “end goal” of countries, but I understand that people who defend a Eurocentric argument are most likely to view that as the ultimate sign of progression and argue in that regard. He introduced and reviewed ideas I already knew and accepted, and did what he promised to do: refute diffusionist ideas. In the conclusion, he states that this book is more of an introduction to the subject and idea, and I'm inclined to agree. The book is a good start to rebutting Eurocentric ideas and brushing on non-Eurocentric views, but I would call it just that: a start.