The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
A light-hearted look at the history and practice of "the ultimate human-interest story," the obituary.
"What a wonderful surprise--a charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries. The Dead Beat is sly, droll, and completely winning."-- David Halberstam
Where can readers celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? The obituary page, of course. Enthralled by these fascinating former lives, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the little known world of the obituary page to find out what made it so compelling. She sought out the best obits in the English language, and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making the pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, she leads us into the cult and culture behind this fascinating segment of our daily news.
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Marilyn Johnson is a former editor and writer for Life, Esquire, and Outside magazines, and lives with her husband, Rob Fleder, in New York's Hudson Valley.
"A beautifully written, funny, and fascinating tour through the unexpectedly lively world of obituaries."--Lisa Grunwald, author of Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present
"A charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries... sly, droll, and completely winning."--David Halberstam
"A joyful book about obituaries? Absolutely! Marilyn Johnson pulls it off with death-defying grace, insight, charm, and wit."--Lee Eisenberg, author of The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life
