The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death
Summary (from the publisher): Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has composed a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.
How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That's why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.
How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That's why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.
Review: This book is composed of a series of loosely connected essays that all explore the history of ideas behind the meaning of life and death in America. In other words, it explores how knowledge - or the lack of knowledge - has shaped Americans' understanding of life and death. For example, the emerging constructs of childhood, adolescence, and parenthood altered the view of the progression of life and the views on how these phases of lie should be carried out. With essays exploring ideas on conception, baby food, childhood and children's books, sexuality, marriage, life satisfaction, motherhood, old age, and death, the book covers a wide range of emerging ideas and knowledge and their impact on American thinking through the decades.
This was an odd read. Although very loosely connected, the focus of each chapter seemed widely disparate and almost randomly chosen to me, under the vast umbrella of 'life and death.' For example, although I expected chapters on the emerging ideas on conception, sexuality, and death, other chapters such as the history of children's room in public libraries, that includes a detailed account of the librarian who tried to block the readership of E.B. White's Stuart Little to be an interesting but bizarre inclusion. I realize that the essays mostly originated as standalone pieces written for the New Yorker but they still failed to cohere into one body of work for me. Likewise, the chapter on worker's efficiency and time management seemed like a segue from the rest of the text. In short, many of the chapters focused on quirky constructs in American culture that did in some way impact American life or death - but then doesn't everything?
Jill Lepore is an excellent writer and many of the tidbits in this book were fascinating, albeit randomly assorted, insights into American history.
Stars: 3
Related Title:
- Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
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