Dying well, Jenkinson writes, is a right and responsibility of everyone. It is not a lifestyle option. It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation all people owe their ancestors and their heirs. Die Wise dreams such a dream and plots such an uprising. How we die, how we care for dying people, and how we carry our dead: This work makes our capacity for a village-mindedness – or breaks it.

For most of us, our own funeral is an afterthought or, even worse, something we avoid thinking about altogether. For Kathy Benjamin, the very thought of her own impending death brought on crippling fear. So she decided the best way to remedy that was to deal with it the best way she knew how. By writing something funny.