"Mo Rocca has always loved obituaries -- reading about the remarkable lives of world leaders, captains of industry, innovators and artists. But not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. With Mobituaries -- the book companion to the CBS podcast of the same name -- the journalist, humorist, and history buff is righting that wrong, profiling the people who have long fascinated him -- from the 20th century's greatest entertainer... to...

"In a surprisingly upbeat, heartfelt book about a serious subject, The Wall Street Journal's veteran obituary writer, award-winning journalist James R. Hagerty, shares his unique skills with those who want to have the last word with flourish, honesty, and even humor. Whether in-brief for future newspapers and websites, or as a more complete mini-memoir for friends and family, Yours Truly is a guide to making sure your story is told the way you want--and...

"At a time when the free press is under threat, OBIT. takes a rare look inside one of the United States' foremost journalistic institutions, The New York Times. The steadfast writers of the paper's Obituaries section approach their work with journalistic rigor and narrative flair, each day depositing the details of a handful of extraordinary lives into the cultural memory. Going beyond the byline and into the minds of those chronicling the recently...

"After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In Obit, Chang writes of "the way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking." These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died ("civility," "language," "the future," "Mother's blue dress") and the cultural...

"Nell Stevens' life is a mess. When her business goes bust and her fiance with it, Nell's happy ever after in California falls apart and she moves back to London to start over. But a lot has changed since she's been gone. All her single friends are now married with children, sky-high rents force her to rent a room in a stranger's house, and in a world of perfect Instagram lives, she feels like a f*ck up. Even worse, a forty-something f*ck-up. But...

Expecting to cover zoning meetings and school plays, Paul Tomm signs on as a cub reporter with a small-town paper near his Connecticut alma mater. When Jaan Puhapaev, a professor doing his research on the ancient art of alchemy, dies under suspicious circumstances, Paul is called back to the campus to write an obituary. But Puhapaev had no family or friends, and the only person who seems to have known anything about him is the beautiful next-door...

The discovery of a body buried at Palisades Amusement Park and the horrifying death of a female television host arouse suspicions about reporter Laura Walsh, whose television obituaries seem a little prescient.

Obituaries published in the New York times of notable individuals who died from August 2010 through July 2011.

Timothy Schaffert has created his most memorable character yet in Essie, an octogenarian obituary writer for her family's small town newspaper. When a young country girl is reported to be missing, perhaps whisked away by an itinerant aerial photographer, Essie stumbles onto the story of her life. Or, it all could be simply a hoax, or a delusion, the child and child-thief invented from the desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn woman. Either way,...