Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection

Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection
January 28, 2012 – July 8, 2012

Chicago Cultural Center
Exhibit Hall and Sidney R. Yates Gallery
78 E. Washington Street

This wild and wonderfully eclectic collection of Richard Harris is brought together from all corners of the world to present a wide-ranging survey of art about mortality and death. The Chicago Public Library offers this Death Bibliography (also available as a PDF) in conjunction with this exhibit.

Death Bibliography

Dig these up at CPL:

Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab, the Body Farm, Where the Dead Do Tell Tales
By Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson
The intriguing story of the Body Farm, designed to help scientists solve murder cases, is deftly intertwined with the personal reflections of one of its founders.

Hello Goodbye
By Emily Chenoweth
Teenaged Abby wrestles conflicting feelings of sadness and resentment as her mother fights cancer while her father tries to hide the terminal prognosis from his family.

The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman
After narrowly avoiding a murderer’s knife, toddler Bod Owens finds himself alone in the world—except for the ghosts in a nearby cemetery who take on the task of raising him.

Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve
By Sandra M. Gilbert
Following her husband’s unexpected death, Gilbert set out to investigate the ways that death and grief are handled in America today.

Tinkers
By Paul Harding
As George nears death, he reflects on his life as his family gathers around him. At times he channels his own father, a tinker and mystic, in this haunting tale.

No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
By Thich Nhat Hanh
In this book, the famed philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh seeks to guide readers in a Buddhist understanding of coming to peace with death.

Newes from the Dead
By Mary Hooper
In 1650 a hanged woman awoke on a dissecting table, minutes before the doctor made the first cut. Based on a true story, she claims her innocence while doctors and priests clash over her fate.

Her Fearful Symmetry
By Audrey Niffenegger
When twin sisters Valentina and Julia inherit their aunt’s apartment in London, they are surprised to learn that she many not have actually left yet.

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir
By David Rieff
In this unvarnished memoir, Susan Sontag’s son recounts nursing his mother through her unsuccessful fight with cancer.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
By Mary Roach
Both funny and fascinating, Roach explores what happens to the body after death—from burial and cremation to scientific research and beyond.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot
One cancer victim in the 1950s unknowingly provided the building blocks to thousands of scientific breakthroughs.