Book Clüb: All The Living And The Dead

Museum members, College Fellows, and their guests are invited to the first-ever Mütter Museum Book Clüb featuring Hayley Campbell's newest release, All the Living And The Dead.

Register on this page to join in-person at the Mütter Museum to discuss Campbell's exploration of the death industry and the people that make it tick. The conversation will be lead by Julia Jordan, Director of Retail Operations & Visitor Engagement.

Book club attendees receive 15% off All the Living And The Dead when they purchase through the ! Check your confirmation email for a link to the online Museum Store and the 15% off promo code. 

Can’t attend in person? Click  to join us virtually for this hybrid event!

About the Book

A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.

We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

About the Author

Hayley Campbell is an author, broadcaster, and journalist. Her work has appeared in WIRED, The Guardian, New Statesman, Empire, GQ, and more. Her books include All the Living and the Dead and The Art of Neil Gaiman. She lives in London with her cat, Ned.

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