I don't hand out 5/5's often, but I think "made it into my dreams (nightmares?)" is a qualifying achievement. this book was unlike any "death and dying" book that I've ever read. you have memoirs that death workers write themselves, you have literature written by those experiencing grief and sickness, you have nonfiction exploring death practices in different cultures, you have critiques of medicine, the death industry, and postmortem practices in America, etc.-- all written by healthcare workers, morticians, patients, and grievers that are intimately involved with the topic of death and dying (or, at least, more than most of us). "all the living and the dead" didn't fit into any of those categories; that's what made it so incredible. hayley describes herself as being curious about death, but she's a journalist, not an undertaker or gravedigger or hospice nurse. so, the things that you expect with this kind of book aren't there-- horrors of a battlefield, or oncology ward, or a coroner's autopsy table. but, here's the incredible thing-- instead of detracting from the book, this enhances the book, by a factor of ten. like I said, hayley is a journalist, and her work reflects it. she does a fantastic job introducing her interviewees in objective, descriptive, moving ways, giving each of them an opportunity to teach us something meaningful. every time a chapter closed, I found myself feeling like I had just left the interview room myself and was now watching the interviewees through a window, letting them get back to their work. not all of them were good people in the way I define it, but I found myself missing them anyways. I credit hayley's reporting for that. on the other hand, these detailed, objective reports were followed by perfectly measured doses of intentional non-objectivity. hayley's foray into the death industry allowed me to indulge in my own morbid curiosities and to think about how I would react if I was in the shoes of the workers she described. she didn't pretend to know things that she doesn't, but she's also not shy about asserting the (powerful) things that she learns. the result was an intimate, honest, thorough, and memorable collection of stories about the individuals who work some of the most thank-less (and important) jobs out there. I'll be thinking about this book for a LONG time.