“Talking about death isn’t easy, but mortician Caitlin Doughty is trying to reform how we think about the deaths of loved ones — and prepare for our own.
”My philosophy is honesty,” Doughty tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I think that we’ve been so hidden from death in this culture for such a long time that it’s very refreshing and liberating to talk about death in an open, honest manner.
Doughty is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists who focus on the rituals families perform with their dead and how the industry disposes of dead bodies. She is also starting her own funeral service in Los Angeles, called Undertaking L.A., that will help families with planning after they lose a family member.
Doughty’s new memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory, serves as, among other things, a way for her to cope with working with dead bodies.”
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
by Caitlin Doughty
W. W. Norton | 9780393240238 | $24.95 | Cloth
A Fall 2014 INDIES INTRODUCE pick!
Another year, another immensely well-reviewed book of history from W.W. Norton winning a major award. Following in the footsteps of Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2011) and The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2009), Alan Taylor has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1932.
This is Alan Taylor's second Pulitzer Prize for History – he previously won in 1996 for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.
Congratulations to Alan Taylor and W.W. Norton!
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
Alan Taylor
9780393073713 | $35.00 | Sept 2013
W. W. Norton
Norton: twitter
Candlewick Press announced yesterday that Jon Klassen's two hat-related picture books with – I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat – have a combined worldwide in-print total of 1 million copies.
As reported in Publishers Weekly, Jon Klassen was grateful to everyone involved:
Klassen is quick to share the credit for his books’ success – and his gratitude. “A huge heartfelt, humbled, amazed, deeply-grateful, crazily-lucky, kind-of-suspicious-it’s-all-a-trick, but-hoping-never-to-find-out thank you to everybody who helped with the making of, the editing of, the distribution of, the promotion of, the displaying of, the talking-about of, the recommending of, the selling of, the buying of, and the sitting-down-and-reading of these books,” he told PW. “I wish we could all go bowling or something together.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in PW today, an interview with W.W. Norton editor Starling Lawrence about the origins of Michael Lewis’ latest nationwide bestseller, Flash Boys – what PW called the country's hottest adult title – as well as the Wall Street reaction to the book’s publication.
Janet Maslin reviewed Flash Boys for the NY Times and says:
Because Mr. Lewis is at the helm finding clear, simple metaphors for even the most impenetrable financial minutiae, this tawdry tale should make sense to anyone. And so should its shock value. “Flash Boys” is guaranteed to make blood boil.
And because this is Mr. Lewis, it’s a book about white-hatted heroes who set out to rectify the system. The principal figures in “Flash Boys” were not widely known outside the business world, or even within it, though they will be now. You could find some on LinkedIn, but Wikipedia had never heard of them or their accomplishments. That only adds to the excitement surrounding a book that has been kept carefully under wraps.
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Michael Lewis
9780393244663 | $27.95 | Cloth
W. W. Norton | W. W. Norton & Company