Rituals and texts, with the help of which people of different cultures try to come to terms with the idea of death, were also of interest to the classics of social sciences - E. Tylor, E. Durkheim, B. Malinovsky. By now, the disciplinary boundaries of death studies have become much wider, and this area of humanitarian research itself claims to be one of the most popular and actively developing. Anthropologist and theologian Douglas Davis's book is a comprehensive work that serves as an excellent introduction to this scientific tradition. Davis relies on the concept of “words against death,” which views funeral rites as a person’s response to the most frightening aspect of his own nature, an attempt to adapt to it and even overcome it. From this position, the scientist considers a wide range of issues, which includes human reactions to the loss of loved ones and theories of grief, near-death experiences and symbolic death, the history of cremation and attitudes towards it in different cultures, the death of pets and death on the Internet, new types of environmental burials and cryonics. Douglas Davies is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Death and Life, Durham University, UK.