Customer Reviews

When We Die : The Science, Culture, and Rituals of Death

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
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I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the subject is fascinating, and Mims delves into many aspects of it: religious, ethical, archaeological, medical, etc. On the other hand, it is extremely poorly written. It reads as if it has not yet gone through an editor. Actually, mistakes like "This treatment costs at least $120,000 dollars" make me think it may *not* have, at least not a competent one. And consider this passage on suicide:

"The very careful, practical suicide may use multiple methods. An extreme example would be blowing one's brains out as one drives a car (with the exhaust directed into the car) over a cliff, having taken an overdose beforehand."

A lame attempt at humor, and badly constructed at that. Makes you wonder how much care was given to the research conducted for the book. At any rate, it's bad for Mims' image, and hence for the book's.

"When We Die" might be worth picking up at a deep discount as a quick overview of the subject, but I can't recommend it at full price.

In "When We Die," Biology Professor Cedric Mims provides a succinct overview of all things macabre. He touches upon standard death and dying subjects such as embalming, burial, cremation, organ donation, and bereavement, as well as more unusual topics, including cannibalism, cellular suicide, mummification, compostoriums, acid baths, and necrophilia. No stone is left unturned in his discussion of death, dying, and "the science, culture, and rituals of death."

As much as I enjoyed "When We Die," it was not without its flaws. For starters, it doesn't seem as though the book was properly edited. I wouldn't go as far to say that Mims is a BAD writer, but it could have been better. His misuse of commas, for instance, is atrocious. He also tends to have trouble transitioning between topics. Some of the awkwardness probably stems from the fact that Mims lives in England and spent some time in Australia and Africa. His phraseology can be clumsy and cumbersome, and I'm willing to bet that it's due to cultural differences. The book was initially released in the UK, and it doesn't appear to have been "cleaned up" for its US edition. Spelling and word usage differences remain intact, when his editor really should have changed them in the US version to reflect his new audience.

Additionally, I found some of his statements to be questionable, while other claims were just plain incorrect. For example, he says that $6 million, "spent over 10 years," is enough to clean all the water in third world countries and eliminate deaths due to diarrhea (that estimate seems awfully low, no?). He also refers to the 1978 Jonestown massacre as a "mass suicide" (despite overwhelming evidence that many members were murdered outright), and makes the dubious claim that, "in all cases [of sensational homicides] the murderer is mentally deranged." Taken together, these errors made me question the rest of the information Mims included in "When We Die." Though he does list 4+ pages of references, he does not use footnotes in his text - so it's usually impossible to tell what information he pulled from which sources.

Nonetheless, "When We Die" is a fascinating and largely enjoyable read. Serious scholars may want to pass this one by, but it's an interesting and manageable discussion for laypeople.

This literary work is fascinating. It covers so many areas in a concise yet thorogh manner. Almost addictive reading. Mims takes an obscured subject and breathes into it a new retrospect.

Death is one of the great taboo subjects- you can't get the real story because no one wants to speak frankly bout it. The subject is just to profound. You feel like a teenager trying to find out what sex means. You eventually find out what that means thru study and experimentation-separating fact from fiction. But with death you only get to experiment 1 time-hard to separate wheat from chafe. If you have an interest in life's 2nd greatest landmark(after birth), I couldn't recommend this book more. Mr Mims is a very entertaining writer and seems to cover every imaginable aspect of death. His style is staight talking, stripping the subject of it's mystery. Some of things he covers include the mechanics of dying and burial, forms of suicide, what most people can expect to die of, how death is different that sleep, the hazards of immortality, how embalming works, forms of mummification,crime & how rhe police obtain clues from corpses,the religious side death, and the possibility of the after life. I know this sounds pretty deep but it's very readable. Of particular interest were these little side articles...human relics in Christian Churches(8 churches claim to have Jesus' foreskin),the commercial use of Egyptian mummies in the 19th century, the body snatchers of England,and human sacrifice among the Aztecs. It's an excellent book.

This book is wonderful. I learned something on every page. If you read one book on death this year, read this one. Better than an episode of Quincy.