An entertaining, amusing collection of a wide variety of visions of the afterlife.
Everything you always wanted to know about the afterlife but were too alive to ask.
Jennings, famous Jeopardy! champion and author of multiple bestselling books, catalogs 100 conceptions of an afterlife conjured from mythology, world religions, books, movies, TV, music, theater, and beyond. Sources include such landmark depictions of heaven and hell as those in Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost as well as in lesser-known texts. Amusingly, Jennings presents his compilation as a sort of guidebook for tourists. There are sidebars on "Where To Stay" (in Dante's Inferno, that's the First Circle, "but it's crowded and books up fast”), "Getting Around" (in Hades, via Charon, the ferryman of the dead), and "Eating and Drinking.” In ancient Egypt, "In-Room Dining" for the pharaohs includes a personal supply of mummified eats. Popular-culture portrayals of the afterlife include usual suspects like It's a Wonderful Life and The Twilight Zone but also more obscure fare such as “Heaven,” the Talking Heads song about “a place where nothing ever happens.” For many cultures, death leads to a literal kind of travel to the afterlife, a journey, often across water. Certain figures recur in these otherworldly voyages, including all manner of ghosts and "psychopomps," or “immortal guides.” In the origins of Haitian Voodoo, death is a journey back in time to the “Mother Continent” of the enslaved population. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, one must "clear customs," a series of floating stations, on the way to heaven. Jennings also explores Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, Marvel and DC Comics, Disneyland rides, Twin Peaks, the network comedy The Good Place, video games, and Dungeons and Dragons. The most resonant "No-Frills Accommodations" may be found in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, where "each room has a door, but it usually won't open," and "Hell is—other people."
An entertaining, amusing collection of a wide variety of visions of the afterlife.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781501131585
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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