By Harold Schechter
320 pages; Ballantine

It's to die for: a merry miscellany of all things funereal, from rented caskets (take your final lap in a deluxe model, go under in a plain box) to famous last words (tip: after you've uttered wisdom for the ages, be sure you clam up afterward). Literature professor Harold Schechter sparks The Whole Death Catalogue with gallows humor, good reads (including anything by undertaker Thomas Lynch), Web sites for taphophiles (lovers of graveyards), and shovelfuls of quirky history. Read it now—after all, you can't take it with you.

— Cathleen Medwick