In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, a New York Times best seller and LibraryReads top pick, mortician Doughty explains how she came to her job and why we should be more accepting of death. Here she considers how other countries approach life's end, chronicling the care of mummies in rural Indonesia and Bolivia's natitas, wish-granting human skulls that puff on cigarettes. Also discussed: new rituals in America such as green burial. Important concerns but also note that the book is pubbing a few weeks before Halloween.

In her first book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Doughty shared her experiences working in a crematory. Here, the author travels the world observing and researching rituals surrounding death in other cultures, bringing the lessons she learns home with her. She visits a technologically advanced columbarium in Japan, where robots retrieve a relative's urn with the scan of a keycard, and the only open-air pyre in the United States. In a remote region of Indonesia, she witnesses people tending their loved ones' mummified corpses, some of which are kept in family homes. In Spain, families spend time with the deceased, but only when the bodies are kept behind glass. Doughty views skulls that grant wishes in Bolivia, candlelit Mexican cemeteries on the Day of the Dead, and experiments with composting human bodies in North Carolina. She is the ideal guide on this journey, curious and respectful, eventually determining that as different as all of these experiences are, they're connected by the idea of "holding space" for loved ones-giving them time to mourn and a sense of purpose as they grieve. VERDICT Recommended for fans of the author and those with an interest in anthropology and ritual. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]—Stephanie Klose, Library Journal

Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death, a nonprofit organization that advocates for natural burial and reducing the stigma around death, describes funereal rituals around the world while stopping to reflect on U.S. practices. In Indonesia, for instance, the Toraja keep the dead at home for several months or years until the funeral. The author also explores the North Carolina's FOREST facility, which composts corpses, and the Crestone End of Life, a Colorado nonprofit that performs open-air cremations. Doughty shares her reverence for the dead while poking fun at our fears ("gross as it sounds, I'd come back from the dead for a Diet Coke"). She forces U.S. readers to confront the secretive and profitable mortuary business and sheds light on cultures that celebrate death. If death is inevitable, she asks, why are we afraid to address it? As the Bolivians look to their natitas (special human skulls), we can look to them for a level of comfort and familiarity with death. "How would your ancestors deal with tragedy?" Probably not with a $10,000 check to take a dead body away. VERDICT Recommend this fascinating and well-written book to fans of Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.—Pamela Schembri, Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, NY