The Denial of Death

By: Ernest Becker

Narrated by: Raymond Todd

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Denial of Death explores how people and cultures around the world have reacted to the concept of death from celebrated cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the “why” of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie—man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after its writing.

hard to read but enriching

it is an old book with ever green new ideas and some ideas that nowadays won't be accepted. I do recommend it.

Great book on philosophy and psychology

Examples are interesting and thought provoking to listen to and really make one think about the subject.

Time well spent.

This one is among my favorites. The Denial of Death is a challenging and thought-provoking book that helps navigate ideas around fear, ego, and mortality that are often left vague. It requires an open mind and a willingness to question deeply held beliefs; readers with very rigid religious views may find it uncomfortable. The narration is solid, and the book leaves you thinking rather than offering easy answers.

In Coherent Name Dropping

The author drops the names of his favorite psychologists over and over again. Their names must make up a nonnegligible number of words in this book. I assume the names are dropped to give authority to the random string of thoughts that precede and follow them.

I appreciate that the author had epiphanies of thoughts that were powerful to him. The key to communication is taking what seems so powerful to the person and structuring words into sentences and paragraphs the transfer that same understanding to the readers who don't yet have the same imagery or feeling in their own head. Most sentences seem loosely related to the once before and after them.

The only people whom this book will resonate with are people who already think the same as the author.

He treats anxiety as if it floats above biology instead of emerging from it.