🎧All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work by Hayley Campbell

Genre ~ Non-Fiction

Release date ~ August 16, 2022

POV ~ single, 1st person

Page count ~ 266

Audio length ~ 8 hours and 57 minutes

My rating ~ 4.45 ⭐

My review:

I have read many books revolving around fictional death, but never one about the people that work closely with death. Some professionals that Hayley interviews are morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, and executioners.

I found this to be well researched, somewhat graphic and eye opening. I must admit I never really thought about who is behind the scenes cleaning up crime scenes, performing autopsies and those getting bodies ready for funeral viewings, as well as gravediggers. It was, also, interesting to me that executions are listed as homicides on the death certificate ~ I mean it makes sense and I don’t know what I thought it would be, well actually I never really thought about it. But then is the executioner considered the murderer?

It was narrated by Hayley Campbell, the author, for 8 hours and 57 minutes, easy to follow at 2x. She made it sound just like she wrote the words herself 😂

Non-fiction is not my usual genre, but I like to expand my horizons once in a while and I am glad I chose this book to do so. It’s very well written and fascinating. I really liked that she took a hands on approach during some of the interviews.

TW ~ death of a baby

*Thanks to Macmillan Audio, Hayley Campbell and NetGalley for the advance audiobook. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

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A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.

We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

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