The Book of Dead Philosophers

Knowing what constitutes a good death has been a concern of philosophers since antiquity. Many of the deaths of the nearly 200 philosophers included in this book by fellow philosopher Simon Critchley were, to say the least, bizarre.
Stories of madness, murder, and tragicomic ends abound. Heraclitus died suffocated in ox dung; Empedocles jumped into the mouth of a volcano; Jeremy Bentham was embalmed and put on display at University College London; Albert Camus died foolishly in a car accident at the height of his fame.

In this history of philosophy through the deaths of its protagonists, Critchley shows how what philosophers said about death and how they lived theirs can help us confront our finitude much more constructively.