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.

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.