Death and bereavement come to us all.

This is the first book to help us explain and understand their history across twentieth-century Australia.

It draws aside the veil of silence that surrounded death for fifty years after 1918 - characterised by denial, minimal ritual and private sorrow - and explores the changes since the 1980s.

Emotional and compelling, award-winning writer Pat Jalland's important book looks at the World Wars and the impact of medicine, with many stories drawn from letters and diaries. She also discusses cancer, euthanasia, palliative care, the funeral business, cemeteries and cremation.

As in her previous studies of death in Britain and Australia, though with an even surer hand, Jalland here combines rigorous and ingenious scholarship with profound human understanding of grief and pain.