Book List 2: 100 Books about Mortality
It’s been 3 years since I started The Mortal Atheist Blog and I just hit my 100-book milestone. Here’s to a thousand hours spent reading and reviewing books about death, dying, grief, mortality, immortality, corpses, extinction, and non-existence.
100 books about mortality:
1. Being Mortal (Atul Gawande)
2. Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)
3. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Caitlin Doughty)
4. The Five Invitations (Frank Ostaseski)
5. The Needs of the Dying (David Kessler)
6. A Year to Live (Stephen Levine)
7. Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God (Greta Christina)
8. The Bright Hour (Nina Riggs)
9. The Consolations of Mortality (Andrew Stark)
10. The Welcome Visitor (Jarvis and Humphrys)
11. So Far So Good – Final Poems: 20142018 (Ursula K. Le Guin)
12. Lessons from the Dying (Rodney Smith)
13. Let’s Talk About Dying (Steve Gordon and Irene Kacandes)
14. Advice for Future Corpses (Sallie Tisdale)
15. Becoming Earth (Eva Saulitis)
16. On Death and Dying (Elisabeth KublerRoss)
17. Graceful Exits (Sushila Blackman)
18. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart (Gordon Livingston)
19. The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
20. Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor)
21. The Worm at the Core (Sheldon Solomon et. al.)
22. How to be Sick (Toni Bernhard)
23. With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial (Kathryn Mannix)
26. Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (Stephen Cave)
28. Nothing to be Frightened of (Julian Barnes)
29. Grief Workbook For Skeptics (Carol Fiore)
30. Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (Carl Sagan)
31. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (Caitlin Doughty)
32. How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (Sherwin Nuland)
33. Staring At The Sun (Irvin Yalom)
34. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
35. We All Know How This Ends (Anna Lyons and Louise Winter)
36. Death (Todd May)
37. Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab (Christine Montross)
38. Die Wise (Stephen Jenkinson)
39. Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
40. At The Existentialist Café (Sarah Bakewell)
41. The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)
42. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (Leo Tolsty)
43. Death and Philosophy (Edited by Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon)
44. Who Says You’re Dead? Medical & Ethical Dilemmas for the Curious & Concerned
45. Natural Causes (Barbara Ehrenreich)
46. Wave (Sonali Deraniyagala)
47. Working Stiff (Judy Meliner)
48. The Epicurus Reader (Inwood, Gerson, Hutchinson)
49. From Here To Eternity: Traveling The World To Find The Good Death (Caitlin Doughty)
50. Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life (Ira Byock)
51. A Matter Of Death And Life (Irvin and Marilyn Yalom)
52. Mortals: How the Fear of Death Shaped Human Society (Rachel and Ross Menzies)
53. Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management For Mortals (Oliver Burkeman)
54. A Fragile Life (Todd May)
55. How High We Go In The Dark (Sequoia Nagamatsu)
56. The Measure (Nikki Erlick)
57. The Hour of Our Death (Philippe Ariès)
58. Dead Mom Walking (Rachel Matlow)
59. The Undying (Anne Boyer)
60. Death Interrupted (Blair Bigham)
61. Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (Pauline Chen)
62. The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
63. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (Stephen King)
65. A Tour of Bones (Denise Inge)
66. Supernatural: Death, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World (Clary Routledge)
67. This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals (Erica Buist)
68. Death With Interruptions (Jose Saramago)
69. Making Friends With Death (Laura Pritchett)
70. Come of Age (Stephen Jenkinson)
71. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (John Izzo)
72. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V.E. Schwab)
73. The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
74. Ishmael (Daniel Quinn)
75. Thirty Things to do After You Die (Colton Lazars)
76. Everything is Temporary: Illustrated Contemplations on How Death Shapes Our Lives (Iris Gottlieb)
77. Curing the Dread of Death (Edited by Menzies, Menzies, and Iverach)
78. Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives (David Eagleman)
79. Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune)
80. Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You About this Magnificent Life
81. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (Robert Jay Lifton)
83. The God of Endings (Jacqueline Holland)
84. Living with Death without God (Valerie Jack)
85. Big Fish (Daniel Wallace)
86. The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll be Dead (David Shields)
88. The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (David Benatar)
89. No Happy Endings (Nora McInerny)
90. Bodies In Motion And At Rest (Thomas Lynch)
91. What Dying People Want (David Kuhl)
92. The Light of the World (Elizabeth Alexander)
93. Mrs. Death Misses Death (Salena Godden)
94. Living in the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive (Larry Rosenberg)
96. Die With Zero (Bill Perkins)
97. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
98. Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying (Beatrice Marovich)
99. Ashes to Admin (Evie King)
100. The Grim Reader (Edited by Maura Spiegel and Richard Tristman)