All of Us

In this resourceful compilation, Anderson, a radio producer and freelance writer (Affairs in Order: A Complete Resource Guide to Death and Dying), provides 110 interviews about dying that she conducted with a wide cross section of Americans--from waitresses and artists to physicians and teenagers. Interwoven through the interviews is a chronology of Western ideas about death (from 100,000 B.C., when the practice of burial began, to the 1990s, with a California jeweler's creation of ""dead baby"" necklaces). Anderson concludes that Western society, with the aid of the mass media and our cultural emphasis on scientific rationality, supports a denial of death and encourages people to shrink from confronting their own mortality. A significant number of participants, however, were willing to view death in a more spiritual light, either through Eastern traditions or through the rituals of their particular religions, and this point of view the author endorses. Several contributions come from people forced to deal with death at an early age--such as inner-city teenagers whose friends have been shot or those with friends (or patients) dying from AIDS. Anderson's intriguing survey of this once taboo topic is well worth a look. (Sept.)