The collection examines death from medical, philosophical, religious, psychological, literary and speculative perspectives. Its contributors consider the definition of death, the experience of dying, childhood responses to mortality, religious beliefs about an afterlife and questions concerning possible survival beyond bodily death. Toynbee serves as editor and principal contributor, approaching these subjects chiefly through historical comparison.

Toynbee traces traditional attitudes towards death and their transformation in modern Western society, while also considering death in war, increased longevity and humanity’s changing perspective on mortality. His contributions place individual experiences of death within wider shifts in culture, religion and social conditions. In his concluding discussion of life and death, he turns from historical description towards the personal meaning of mortality, questioning the fear attached to one’s own extinction and emphasising the suffering death brings to those who survive. The volume as a whole presents mortality as both a universal human condition and a subject interpreted differently across societies and disciplines.