An inescapable book in the bibliography that deals with our relationship with death and its role in shaping a cultural environment and the forms of exchange that take place in it, the present essays by Philippe Ariès, since its publication for the first time in 1975 , have already become a classic. Originally conceived as a series of lectures for Johns Hopkins University, its course covers various branches of the humanities (history, ethnology and cultural anthropology), and presents the fascinating story of the gradual change of death, seen as something familiar and "domesticated" from the medieval world, to another more modern, cursed conception, and from which one tries to flee. It enlightens us, then, with singular insight, about our present.