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The New York Times Book of the Dead: 320 Print and 10,000 Digital Obituaries of Extraordinary People
The obituary page of The New York Times isa celebration of extraordinary lives. This groundbreaking package includes 300 obits in the book with exclusive online access to 10,000 more of the most important and fascinating obituaries the Times has ever published.
The obituary page is the section many readers first turn to not only see who died, but to read some of the most inspiring, insightful, often funny, and elegantly written stories celebrating the lives of the men and women who have influenced on our world.
William McDonald, The Times' obituary editor who was recently featured in the award-winning documentary Obit, selected 320 of the most important and influential obits from the newspaper's archives. In chapters like "Stage and Screen," "Titans of Business," "The Notorious," "Scientists and Healers," "Athletes," and "American Leaders," the entries include a wide variety of newsmakers from the last century and a half, including Annie Oakley, Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Prince. Also included is a web-key which allows instant access to an exclusive website featuring 10,000 selected obituaries which are easily searchable by name, theme, dates, and more. Designed with more than 150 black-and-white photographs, this tomb-sized book plus website package is the perfect gift.
The obituary page is the section many readers first turn to not only see who died, but to read some of the most inspiring, insightful, often funny, and elegantly written stories celebrating the lives of the men and women who have influenced on our world.
William McDonald, The Times' obituary editor who was recently featured in the award-winning documentary Obit, selected 320 of the most important and influential obits from the newspaper's archives. In chapters like "Stage and Screen," "Titans of Business," "The Notorious," "Scientists and Healers," "Athletes," and "American Leaders," the entries include a wide variety of newsmakers from the last century and a half, including Annie Oakley, Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Prince. Also included is a web-key which allows instant access to an exclusive website featuring 10,000 selected obituaries which are easily searchable by name, theme, dates, and more. Designed with more than 150 black-and-white photographs, this tomb-sized book plus website package is the perfect gift.
656 pages, Hardcover
Published October 18, 2016
67 people are currently reading
854 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 19, 2023
4.50 ⭐️ — One if my absolute favourite display books, this is an obvious & I comic read as well, given it basically covers 330-odd of the more prominent figures to ever have an obituary written in the iconic NYT.
Some of the best short-session reading you’ll ever get, with phenomenal presentation & always consistently poignant writing allows the perfect pedagogical environment. Whether it’s Celebrities, politicians or authors and athletes — this book of notables is full of incredible writing & offers a prescient insight into many people you either didn’t know or didn’t know quite as much as you thought you did, either way this is a perfect addition to ANY and ALL serious bookshelves across the world.
Some of the best short-session reading you’ll ever get, with phenomenal presentation & always consistently poignant writing allows the perfect pedagogical environment. Whether it’s Celebrities, politicians or authors and athletes — this book of notables is full of incredible writing & offers a prescient insight into many people you either didn’t know or didn’t know quite as much as you thought you did, either way this is a perfect addition to ANY and ALL serious bookshelves across the world.
November 22, 2016
Obituaries provide a fascinating look at a person's life. NYT's Book of the Dead is a compilation of the obituaries of famous people going all the way back to the late great Abe Lincoln. I hope The Times will put out a similar book with obituaries of fascinating non famous people. Who should read this? Morbid weirdo's like me.
December 17, 2019
Changed the way I think about life. When our time is up, this is all we get - your 70/80 years (if we're lucky) condensed into a few paragraphs, even for truly accomplished people like Roosevelt (pick one: Theodore, Franklin D, or Eleanor), Einstein, or Marie Curie. And that's if you clear the noteworthiness bar and make it into the NY Times obituary section.
Here are the things that consistently didn't make the cut - the time someone stressed about what shirt to wear to that thing, or whether the joke someone made was awkward. Even in a book filled with obituaries of people we knew primarily through their careers, a president's entire term took up remarkably little space.
So I guess what I realized in the ~2 years it took me to read this book was this: don't sweat the little bullshit. We should focus on the things that do make it into your obituary: our families, a little bit of work (though I'm loathe to admit it), and being someone the people you leave behind can tell a good story about.
Then we might get a obituary that looks more like this.
Here are the things that consistently didn't make the cut - the time someone stressed about what shirt to wear to that thing, or whether the joke someone made was awkward. Even in a book filled with obituaries of people we knew primarily through their careers, a president's entire term took up remarkably little space.
So I guess what I realized in the ~2 years it took me to read this book was this: don't sweat the little bullshit. We should focus on the things that do make it into your obituary: our families, a little bit of work (though I'm loathe to admit it), and being someone the people you leave behind can tell a good story about.
Then we might get a obituary that looks more like this.
January 15, 2017
It was VERY long and VERY informative. Lots of great take-aways from this and it's a great book to keep on hand for reference if you are into famous people - especially famous dead people. It's kind of crazy to think that when we die, we get a mere page (less for us common folk) to explain what it took an entire life-time to accomplish. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. I won't bore you with my thoughts (because I have MANY) but I loved reading this book (but it definitely required a commitment).
Katharine Graham (American Journalist) once said, "The only thing I think any of us want, is to last as long as we're any good. And then not."
Robert Frost - was quoted from an interview as saying, "If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole world, then it isn't worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in."
Eudora Welty - said that "long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."
P.T. Barnum - "The boy was early taught that if he would succeed in the world, he must work hard. When he was only six years of age he drove cows to and from pasture, weeded the kitchen garden at the back of the humble house in which he was born, and as he grew older rode the plow horse, and whenever he had an opportunity attended school."
James Cagney - "Absorption in things other than self, is the secret of a happy life."
Katharine Hepburn - "I have no fear of death. Must be wonderful, like a long sleep. But let's face it: it's how you live that really counts."
Ella Fitzgerald - When she received her honorary doctorate of Music from Yale she said, "Not bad for someone who only studied music to get that half-credit in high school."
Katharine Graham (American Journalist) once said, "The only thing I think any of us want, is to last as long as we're any good. And then not."
Robert Frost - was quoted from an interview as saying, "If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole world, then it isn't worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in."
Eudora Welty - said that "long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."
P.T. Barnum - "The boy was early taught that if he would succeed in the world, he must work hard. When he was only six years of age he drove cows to and from pasture, weeded the kitchen garden at the back of the humble house in which he was born, and as he grew older rode the plow horse, and whenever he had an opportunity attended school."
James Cagney - "Absorption in things other than self, is the secret of a happy life."
Katharine Hepburn - "I have no fear of death. Must be wonderful, like a long sleep. But let's face it: it's how you live that really counts."
Ella Fitzgerald - When she received her honorary doctorate of Music from Yale she said, "Not bad for someone who only studied music to get that half-credit in high school."
April 15, 2019
The biggest book I've ever read (quite literally) except for encyclopedias. It is massive tome - 600+ pages in fine print on a foot-long page.
But do not be daunted by the scale of things. If you set aside 15 minutes or so during your break to read the obituaries in random order (obviously you don't have to read them all), you'll finish the book in no time.
Not only does it enlighten one on the art of obituary writing, it transports you through time to relive the lives of giants whose accomplishments, prominence and impact on society "elevate them to a rarefied plane".
The introduction alone is well worth the read.
But do not be daunted by the scale of things. If you set aside 15 minutes or so during your break to read the obituaries in random order (obviously you don't have to read them all), you'll finish the book in no time.
Not only does it enlighten one on the art of obituary writing, it transports you through time to relive the lives of giants whose accomplishments, prominence and impact on society "elevate them to a rarefied plane".
The introduction alone is well worth the read.
January 25, 2020
First off, I did not read all the obits, but did get through most of them. It is interesting to see how obituaries were written as far back as 1851. The older obituaries were all over the place, with no rhyme or reason as to how they recounted a person's life (thematically or chronologically). I was surprised to see just how little mention was made of the family members left behind, in some cases not even mentioned at all. There were some omissions that I felt should have belonged, but that's entirely subjective. The USB provided to access the digital obituaries did not work with my computer. Windows 10 said it was not a trustworthy source.
March 7, 2020
My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
October 12, 2016
I won a free copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway, but that had no influence on my review.
If you're into the occult or not, this is a very interesting book. This has 320 printed obituaries in the book with over 150 black and white photos and includes a USB web-key. These are highly selected obituaries from The New York Times newspaper archives. This book contains some of the most important and influential people you can think of and if you can't find them in the book just check out the digital files. This book is huge, but easy to navigate. The chapters are broken down into categories of fame variety like Athletes, Scientists, Leaders, etc...
This would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves history or is even a little more into the darker morbid side of life and especially the more difficult person to buy for. This is a great coffee table book, everyone that has come over since this showed up has looked at it with odd wonder and they couldn't help but pick it up, then they couldn't put it down! I would love to one day see this book or similar in a funeral home. This is a fantastic addition to my book collection and I now want more just like it.
I won a free copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway, but that had no influence on my review.
If you're into the occult or not, this is a very interesting book. This has 320 printed obituaries in the book with over 150 black and white photos and includes a USB web-key. These are highly selected obituaries from The New York Times newspaper archives. This book contains some of the most important and influential people you can think of and if you can't find them in the book just check out the digital files. This book is huge, but easy to navigate. The chapters are broken down into categories of fame variety like Athletes, Scientists, Leaders, etc...
This would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves history or is even a little more into the darker morbid side of life and especially the more difficult person to buy for. This is a great coffee table book, everyone that has come over since this showed up has looked at it with odd wonder and they couldn't help but pick it up, then they couldn't put it down! I would love to one day see this book or similar in a funeral home. This is a fantastic addition to my book collection and I now want more just like it.
I won a free copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway, but that had no influence on my review.
September 30, 2018
Best coffee table book ever. I expect to chip away at this for years to come of enjoyable, fascinating, educational reading, one mini-biography at a time.
June 5, 2020
DNF in part because of the factual inaccuracies (e.g., mentioning Lincoln’s “contest” with Frederick Douglass instead of Stephen Douglas, saying that Truman “took oath as the 32nd president”).
July 29, 2024
Very interesting
I really liked the varied individuals mentioned in the book. I wish that there had been more recent obituaries, but understand that they had to have a cutoff date.
I really liked the varied individuals mentioned in the book. I wish that there had been more recent obituaries, but understand that they had to have a cutoff date.
September 4, 2025
This is a fascinating book.
Amazing to see some obituaries from the 18th and 19th century. As well as how journalism has changed from detailed accounts to just the basic of information.
Amazing to see some obituaries from the 18th and 19th century. As well as how journalism has changed from detailed accounts to just the basic of information.
July 7, 2020
Best book.
Great book, to read and write about obituaries. You ca see how people write about extraordinary humans and feel theie absences.
Great book, to read and write about obituaries. You ca see how people write about extraordinary humans and feel theie absences.
February 3, 2017
This very long book is very thorough. NYT prides themselves by hiring the best writers to do obits and it shows. 300 bios of world renowned leaders in many fields from 1850 forward. Mao, Chang Kei Shek, Richard Wagner, Brahms, and Elvis as well as Mohammed Ali. It took a month of reading, but this is really fabulous and readable.
February 9, 2017
I couldn't put this one down! It was a true history lesson. Listings are separated into categories..."Literary", "Hollywood", etc... Don't be put off by the heft or the length of this book, it's physically heavy & long! Some entries offered information I never knew while others were a a "brush-up" on things I learned in school. A must read for everyone!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews