Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a sociologist who has just written a book about the ways that we engage with death and dying online, and before that I wrote a book about media coverage of disasters. Macabre subjects have always fascinated me, I guess, not because they are macabre but because they reveal a great deal about the ways we live and our sense of the value of life itself.


I wrote

The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality

By Timothy Recuber,

Book cover of The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality

What is my book about?

An exploration of the social meaning of digital death.

The Digital Departed explores the posthumous internet world from the perspective…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present

Timothy Recuber Why did I love this book?

Ariès was a masterful medieval historian, and in this slim volume, based on a series of lectures he gave at Johns Hopkins University, he traced big cultural shifts in the way Western culture has thought about death and dying.

Medieval traditions lauded a so-called “tame death,” in which the dying person calmly accepted their fate, received visitors at home, and directed the rituals and ceremonies that would accompany their impending demise. Death was a normal part of domestic life, witnessed by young and old alike.

This is eventually contrasted with the modern way of dying, in which people die in hospitals, not at home, hidden away from most of a society that has come to believe people need to be shielded from sad and upsetting matters like illness and death. It is a fascinating work of history and a powerful critique of contemporary mores around mortality.     

By Philippe Aries, Patricia Ranum (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Western Attitudes toward Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reveals the change in Western man's conception and acceptance of death as evidenced in customs, literature, and art since medieval times.


Book cover of Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness

Timothy Recuber Why did I love this book?

I was blown away by this thought-provoking philosophical examination of the relationship between the living and the dead.

Burial, Hans Ruin points out, is the most ancient cultural-symbolic practice in all of human development. In burying the dead, and through the attendant rituals accompanying burial, we are caring for them and communicating about or with them. Ruin looks at a variety of ways that such care has been accomplished and debated over time, from prehistoric graves to ancient Egyptian pyramids to Sophoclean dramas from ancient Greece.

All of these examples are put to use as part of a larger meditation on what it means to live ethically; as he puts it “there is no social space entirely outside the shared space with the dead. To learn to live is to learn to inhabit this space in a responsible way. Life is a life after, as inheritance, ancestry, legacy and fate.”     

By Hans Ruin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Being with the Dead as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic…


Book cover of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

Timothy Recuber Why did I love this book?

This is the most moving “academic” book I’ve ever read, and really that’s because it blends academic subjects like cultural studies with more personal, memoir-type writing about being a Black woman in the 21st century.

In the Wake is concerned with more than just death, of course, but death looms large throughout the book, as it has in all of Black life throughout American history. Indeed, the first sentence is “I wasn’t there when my sister died,” and over the course of the book we bear witness to many other deaths that have affected the author as well.

Over time, readers come to understand the various meanings of “wake” operating as overlapping metaphors through which the author understands her own experience. There is “wake” as coming into consciousness/waking up to a world full of injustice, there is “the wake” like the path behind a ship, in this case a slave ship, a way to understand Black life today as part of the afterlife of slavery, and there is “wake” as in a way to keep watch with the dead.

All of these meanings combine in a way that uniquely captures the harm and precarity underlying Black life in America today. But this is also a book about care, about Black people trying to understand how to look after one another in a context where Black life is still caught up “in the wake” of such structural violence.   

By Christina Sharpe,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In the Wake as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"-the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness-Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation. Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the…


Book cover of To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

Timothy Recuber Why did I love this book?

This book is a really fun investigation by a brilliant journalist who leads readers through a thorough yet skeptical look at the Silicon Valley-based movement known as “radical life extension” or “transhumanism.”

From hobbyists, to hackers, to scientists, to venture capitalists, a broad contingent of people in and around the “tech” space are convinced today that techno-scientific advancement will eventually allow humanity—or at least a certain small cadre of the wealthiest and savviest humans—to live forever.

There are heavy ideas here, and the book will give you a lot to think about, but it manages to be a breezy read despite the often troubling subject matter.  

By Mark O'Connell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked To Be a Machine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review

Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our biology—of our senses, intelligence, and lifespans—with technology. Its supporters have reached a critical mass and now include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and beyond, among them Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil.

In this provocative and eye-opening account, journalist Mark O’Connell explores the staggering (and terrifying) possibilities that present themselves when you think of your body as an outmoded device. He visits…


Book cover of About to Die: How News Images Move the Public

Timothy Recuber Why did I love this book?

This book is not about death on its own but images of death, and the roles to which they are put by the press and politicians.

Focusing on iconic photographs of death from events such as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the Vietnam War, and the September 11th attacks, among many others, Zelizer charts a growing discomfort over time with images of death in the news. As technology improved, such photos became more graphic and intimate, and norms around the increasingly professionalized field of journalism came to render them mostly off limits.

Despite the general squeamishness of Western journalists and readers towards such images today, however, we do still see them during major world events and important breaking stories. It’s also true, Zelizer points out, that images of death in far away places are often shown in American newspapers with less concern.

There are important lessons here for all of us in the year 2024, as we are once again confronted by horrific news images of war and death that make us question the moral obligations that come with bearing witness to others’ suffering.

By Barbie Zelizer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked About to Die as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Due to its ability to freeze a moment in time, the photo is a uniquely powerful device for ordering and understanding the world. But when an image depicts complex, ambiguous, or controversial events--terrorist attacks, wars, political assassinations--its ability to influence perception can prove deeply unsettling. Are we really seeing the world "as it is" or is the image a fabrication or projection? How do a photo's content and form shape a viewer's impressions? What do such images contribute to historical memory? About to Die focuses on one emotionally charged category of news photograph--depictions of individuals who are facing imminent death--as…


Explore my book 😀

The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality

By Timothy Recuber,

Book cover of The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality

What is my book about?

An exploration of the social meaning of digital death.

The Digital Departed explores the posthumous internet world from the perspective of both the living and the dead. Based on hundreds of blog posts, suicide notes, Twitter hashtags, and videos, I examine the ways we die online, and the digital texts we leave behind. Combining these data with interviews, surveys, analysis of news coverage, and a historical overview of the relationship between death and communication technology going back to pre-history, The Digital Departed explains what it means to live and die on the internet today. In this thought-provoking and uniquely troubling work, I show that although we might pass away, our digital souls live on, online, in a kind of purgatory of their own.

Book cover of Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present
Book cover of Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness
Book cover of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

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Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

By Lyle Greenfield,

Book cover of Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

Lyle Greenfield Author Of Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward. 

Lyle's book list on restoring your belief in human possibility

What is my book about?

We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike. 

My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…

Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

By Lyle Greenfield,

What is this book about?

Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.

First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…


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