Harvey Cox is one of America’s most widely read public theologians. In many bestselling books he has written on religion and faith for a wide general audience. Here, he explores questions that underlie all religion: What is the point of life that ends in death? What are the different ways we think about the afterlife? What are we actually talking about when we talk about heaven, and what do such thoughts about life after death mean for life on earth?
Along the way, Cox surveys approaches to death in antiquity and in other cultures and religions, draws on personal stories, including an account of his youthful work as an assistant to his undertaker uncle, and offers reflections, as he passes the age of 90, on his own mortality.
“A book, with the legendary Harvey Cox wisdom on full display, eloquently written to change the way people think and believe, live and die.”
—James Carroll
Harvey Cox, an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church, served for many years as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School until his retirement in 2009. Beginning with his best-selling work The Secular City (1965), he has written over a dozen books, most recently, How to Read the Bible, and The Market as God.