Western Attitudes toward Death

Philippe Ariès (1914-1984) was a French historian best known for his book Centuries of Childhood, the seminal study that launched historical scholarship on childhood and family life in the Western world.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Tamed DeathChapter 2. One's Own DeathChapter 3. Thy DeathChapter 4. Forbidden DeathIndex

Aries traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret. Newsweek An astounding story, told with the incisiveness and mastery characteristic of Aries's work. -- Robert Darnton New York Review of Books 1974