Peter N. Stearns is University Professor of History at George Mason University, USA.

Part 1: General Patterns and Connections 1. Patterns Of Death, 1800-2020: Global Rates And Causes 2. Mass Death During Modern Epidemics: Horrors and Their Consequences 3. Violent Death 4. Suicidology on the Cusp of Modernity: Sociology and Psychiatry in the 19th Century 5. Death-Seeking Turns Political: A Historical Template For Terrorism 6. Toward a World Without the Death Penalty 7. The Cemetery 8. Death, Commemoration, and the Era Of Total War In Europe 9. The Transformation of Death Discourse: From 'Taboo' to 'Revival' at the Threshold of the New Millennium Part 2: Regional Patterns 10. "Why may not man be one day immortal?": Rethinking Death in the Age of Enlightenment 11. "Now for the Grand Secret:" A History of the Post-Mortem Identity and Heavenly Reunions, 1800-2000 12. Death in Modern North American History 13. Death In Mexico: Image And Reality 14. Death in Modern Japan (1800-2020) 15. Picturing the Dead in Early Twentieth-Century China: Bodies, Burial, and the Photography of the Chinese Red Cross Burial Corps 16. Remaking the Hindu Pyre: Cremation in India since the 1830s 17. Muslim Beliefs About Death; From Classical Formulations To Modern Applications 18. Death in Africa: A History c.1800 to Present Day 19. Rituals Of Death In The Caribbean Diaspora, 1970-: The Immigrant Dilemmas Part 3: Special Topics 20. Premature Burial and the Mysteries of Death 21. Murdering Mothers and Dutiful Daughters: Infanticide in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico 22. 'I wish we could have saved him for you': Australia's experience of death and bereavement in war, 1914-1918 23. Soviet Cemeteries 24. Death in Modern Film 25. Of Presidential Mausoleums and Politics in Neo-Liberal Zambia, 2008 to 2018 26. Celebrating Creation and Commemorating Life: Ritualizing Pet Death in the U.S. and Japan 27. Hospice: A Way to Die 28. "A Profound Shift In Policy": The History Of Assisted Suicide 29. Conclusion: Future Trajectories of Death: Speculations and Raising Questions