All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work

Written by Hayley Campbell

Narrated by Hayley Campbell

"Journalist Hayley Campbell explores the often hidden world of those who work closely with death, finding compassion in unexpected settings. Campbell’s British accent and matter-of-fact delivery take the listener on a tour of mortuaries, postmortem experimentation, death-mask artistry, crime-scene cleaning, and executions, among others. Her morbid fascination is evident in her tone as she sheds light on curiosities surrounding a subject that is foreign to many people. Ultimately, Campbell calls for a closer relationship to death, less mystery surrounding this universal passage, and a reduction of fear through greater understanding."- AudioFile on All the Living and the Dead

"Campbell is a probing investigator whose tone is always even, quietly emphasizing that death is the most natural thing in the world."- Bookpage

This audiobook is read by the author.

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 listeners a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250855169

Hayley Campbell

Hayley Campbell is an author, broadcaster and journalist. She writes for the likes of WIRED, Guardian, New Statesman, BuzzFeed and Empire, and hosts the Unpopped! podcast for BBC Sounds and the Must Watch podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live. She was born in England, moved to Australia for twenty years, and now lives in London.

Reviews for All the Living and the Dead

[wendy1hughes-320431 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book. Not what I expected and I think the author did a fantastic job approaching the subject matter with complete transparency and respect.

[Alyssa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Executed better than I could ever have imagined when I read the title. Recommending it to anyone who will listen, or can read.

[Olivia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This made me appreciate all those invisible people that inadvertently make our lives feel so much happier by making death a profession or a way of living, ironically.

[NoelReneCisnerosPeña · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

¿Qué hacemos con las personas fallecidas? Hayley Campbell emprende un viaje con embalsamadores, hacedores de máscaras mortuorias, médicos que trabajan con cuerpos donados a la ciencia, con forences, con limpiadores de sitios donde falleció una persona para darnos esta obra conmovedora y reveladora del mundo que aguarda a nuestro cuerpo (y el de nuestros seres queridos) una vez hayamos muerto.

[Jessica · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Campbell did a thorough and thoughtful job of shedding light on the aspects of and people involved with death management, from midwives to coroners to freezing bodies for the future. It’s both a tactical and philosophical look at how people handle (or don’t handle) the end of a life. Magnificent. This should be required reading.