
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
And Other Lessons from the Crematory
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Narrated by:
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Caitlin Doughty
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By:
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Caitlin Doughty
About this listen
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty - a 20-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre - took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. With an original voice that combines fearless curiosity and mordant wit, Caitlin tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters, gallows humor, and vivid characters (both living and very dead). Describing how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes), and cared for bodies of all shapes and sizes, Caitlin becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the deceased. Her eye-opening memoir shows how our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead). In the spirit of her popular Web series, "Ask a Mortician", Caitlin’s engaging narrative style makes this otherwise scary topic both approachable and profound.
Caitlin Doughty, the host and creator of the "Ask a Mortician" Web series and the collective Order of the Good Death, is on a mission to change the way we think about death.
©2014 Caitlin Doughty (P)2014 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
For years, Emma Carey was a regular young adult who would wake up and go about their day on autopilot, someone who would look at a sunset and feel unaffected, someone who was living, but not really alive. That is, until something happened that enabled her to really see life for the gift it is. Emma was in a skydiving accident that made her a paraplegic. This book is not just about Emma's fall from the sky and how she learned to walk without ever regaining feeling in her legs but also about the beliefs and ideas that helped her survive.
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Amazing
- By Spiderbaby on 04-09-25
By: Emma Carey
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Stiff
- The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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For two thousand years, cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
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I worked with cadavers for years, but....
- By POQA on 11-11-12
By: Mary Roach
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Mortuary Confidential
- Undertakers Spill the Dirt
- By: Todd Harra, Kenneth McKenzie
- Narrated by: Susan Larkin, Allan Robertson
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell - and a special way of telling them. In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death's door.
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A wonderful read!
- By Grace Adele Spruiell on 12-25-22
By: Todd Harra, and others
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All That Remains
- A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.
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I wanted a science book about forensics. I got a mostly-memoir instead.
- By A Customer on 11-29-19
By: Sue Black
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The Chick and the Dead
- Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors
- By: Carla Valentine
- Narrated by: Beverley A. Crick
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Using the most common postmortem process as the backbone of the narrative, The Chick and the Dead takes the listener through the process of an autopsy while also describing the history and changing cultures of our relationship with the dead. The book is full of vivid insight into what happens to our bodies in the end. Each chapter considers an aspect of an autopsy alongside an aspect of Carla's own life and work and touches on some of the more controversial aspects of our feelings toward death.
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Dull
- By Leah on 08-19-17
By: Carla Valentine
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Dark Archives
- A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
- By: Megan Rosenbloom
- Narrated by: Justis Bolding
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy - the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering.
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Fascinating
- By Abbey Pflegl on 11-21-21
By: Megan Rosenbloom
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Confessions of a Funeral Director
- How the Business of Death Saved My Life
- By: Caleb Wilde
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Death. It happens to everyone, yet most of us don't want to talk about this final chapter of existence. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde intimately understands this reticence and fear. The son of an undertaker, he hesitated to embrace the legacy of running his family's business. Yet he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones profoundly changed his faith and his perspective on death - and life itself.
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Good Story, But narrator is the wrong guy
- By Dale R Clock on 01-17-18
By: Caleb Wilde
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The Asylum
- By: Ann Cusack - contributor, Carol Minto, Joe Cusack - contributor
- Narrated by: Fiona McNeill
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For 46 years, Carol Minto has quietly gone about her life, carrying with her the most extraordinary and heartbreaking secrets. In The Asylum, Carol tells the full story of how she overcame unimaginable suffering, to find the happiness and solace she has today as a mother and grandmother.
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Couldn’t stop listening
- By Tonya Copeland-Stone on 06-12-22
By: Ann Cusack - contributor, and others
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All the Living and the Dead
- From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work
- By: Hayley Campbell
- Narrated by: Hayley Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
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Excellent
- By Noelle on 09-01-22
By: Hayley Campbell
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Silent Siren
- Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician
- By: Matthew Franklin Sias
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A 23-year veteran of emergency medical services, paramedic Matthew Sias took a detour in his career to pursue the death-care business and found a complementarity between two seemingly divergent careers. Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician is the record of some of the more memorable calls he has responded to through the years.
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OK
- By Judy on 03-25-21
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Date Night
- By: Jeffery Deaver
- Narrated by: David Harbour
- Length: 54 mins
- Original Recording
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Death is a topic Bradford Douglas is intimately familiar with. The young attorney is on a crusade against capital punishment. He’s saved a number of death row inmates, but none of his cases has been as tough as the one he now faces: Henry Combs, a vicious serial killer, has only hours to live when Douglas is summoned for a Hail Mary attempt to have the man’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment. As Douglas races to pursue whatever strategies he can think of, he finds his passion for justice giving way to something altogether different. An obsession.
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Did Not See The End Coming
- By Tammie Hughes on 04-24-21
By: Jeffery Deaver
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The Wars of the Roses
- The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The 15th century saw the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. The crown of England changed hands five times as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. Now, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors. Some of the greatest heroes and villains in history were thrown together in these turbulent times.
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No Need for a Score Card
- By Troy on 01-16-15
By: Dan Jones
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Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
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The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
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The Demon Next Door
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Steve White
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Bryan Burrough recently made a shocking discovery: The small town of Temple, Texas, where he had grown up, had harbored a dark secret. One of his high school classmates, Danny Corwin, was a vicious serial killer. In this chilling tale, Burrough raises important questions of whether serial killers can be recognized before they kill or rehabilitated after they do. It is also a story of Texas politics and power that led the good citizens of the town of Temple to enable a demon who was their worst nightmare.
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Odd narration choice
- By Amanda Fredericks on 03-08-19
By: Bryan Burrough
What listeners say about Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
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- Christine
- 03-23-19
Great book
A wonderful memoir and a great/interesting/disturbing look into the business of death in this country.
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to work in a crematorium, this is the book for you! But it is also a deep dive into what our society does with its dead, and traditional funerals--with their costs, toxins, and formalized grief--don't come off well (as they should not). So if you are making end-of-life decisions, you may also want to read this book.
But it is also a memoir of a young woman in her first job. She observes the different cultural practices of the dead's families, she ruminates on suicide and mental illness, the men she works with, and her youth in Hawaii.
All in all, if you like memoirs, as I do, and enjoy learning when you read, I think you will enjoy this book.
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- Lindsey Albright
- 03-17-20
I'm So Glad I Read This
I am so glad I read this book.
I have been fascinated with death for a very long time. I love cemeteries and I've wanted to work in a funeral home for ages but frankly I don't want to work in sales. Caring for a person's body and, in some ways their memory, has always been held in a really divine place in my mind.
I am subscribed to AskAMortician and I love the channel. Caitlin does great work there so I knew I had to check out her books. I think I delayed it because I know she has a fondness for cremation. I'm not against it at all but it is important to me to be buried so I was concerned that this wouldn't strike home as hard.
It did further cement my desire to be buried but this book also let me know what pitfalls I would prefer to specify or navigate for my loved ones before I die. I don't want them to feel burdened into a fancy casket or whatever and I would prefer to pick my cemetery and headstone.
I feel like this book had a lot of impactful and important information. I'm impressed with the content and because I got to listen to it on Audible, I also got to listen to Caitlin tell the stories as she wanted them heard.
Seriously, if she ever has downtime or something and still wants to make a little money, she should narrate books. Her voice is PERFECT for it.
I'd recommend this book to anyone. If I have kids some day, this might be a good one for a roadtrip with a teenager that is curious about these things. Who knows. I loved it though and it deserves a 5/5 star review.
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1 person found this helpful
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- C. Holm
- 11-16-16
Interesting. Intriguing. Overall great!
I really enjoyed listening to this book. I have had it on my reading list for a few years and finally decided it would just be easier to listen to it. Having watched many of Caitlin's videos on YouTube, this book was exactly what I had hoped for. It was interesting. Not at all scary as I wondered if it would be. And the fact the Caitlin is the one that also reads it makes it even better!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Woodstock68
- 03-10-16
Well Written and Informative
What did you love best about Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?
I loved the writing and how thoroughly the author examined the subject of death. As Caitlin Doughty mentions in her book our culture doesn't want to discuss or deal with death if at all possible instead we take an avoidance approach to the process. Doughty shows that death, while difficult to deal with for the family left behind, is indeed a natural and inevitable part of life.
What did you like best about this story?
I liked the author's personal experience and the stories that she shares about her career in the funeral and crematory industry. I appreciate her tasteful use of humor to lighten the subject matter.
What about Caitlin Doughty’s performance did you like?
I thought she gave a great vocal performance and was the perfect voice to read this book. Sometimes when the author reads their own work the results aren't good, this was far from the case with Caitlin Doughty's reading she had just the right cadence and vocal inflection for the subject matter.
What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?
It was interesting to hear some of the alternatives to the typical embalming and casket burials.
Any additional comments?
I'm interested in checking out her blog and website for additional information. I look forward to more books from this author in the future. Great read, intriguing, well researched and intelligent.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Drifting Fox
- 08-02-16
Just goes to show you can't judge a book...
What did you love best about Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?
The fact that it was an eye opener and a learning experience. You hear so many things but you never really know what it's like until someone like Doughty comes along and takes you by the hand. Fascinating.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
No sugar coating here, good or bad you get the facts.
Which scene was your favorite?
Couldn't choose just one.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I am always moved when children are involved. How can you be human and not be moved by the death of a child?
Any additional comments?
I felt like I was facing South when I got this book on a whim. I was facing North when I finished it. Thank you for that Caitlin Doughty.
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- Christina
- 08-07-16
Caitlin Doughty Fangirl!
I love Caitlin Doughty's book, Ask A Mortician series, and The Order of the Good Death webpage. I want to be apart of this movement in my home state of Michigan.
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- Stephanie R Fedorchak
- 12-23-19
Refreshing perspective on mortality
I love Doughty's writing. It makes the subject of death approachable - even desirable to approach. Her perspective on death is unique and deserves a place in any full consideration of how humans approach mortality. Her research is wonderfully thorough which when combined with her personal experiences creates a compelling, hard-to-put-down narrative. Throughout the book there is a note of self-awareness and honesty which comes from the author herself reading her own words. I recommend this book for anyone who has ever had questions about death, dying, cremation, or what it's like to stand at the sidelines of other people's grief.
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- Jessica Hisle
- 12-26-20
Such an AMAZING book!
I've followed Caitlin for many years! She has helped me understand death and break the negative stigma associated with it. This book is phenomenal!
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- Cave Dweller
- 02-28-21
Absolutely Fantastic
Wow. Just incredible. So glad I read this before I die, before my parents die, before I've had to lay a loved one to rest. I think the book is life changing. Thank you, Caitlin.
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- Erica Knowles
- 06-13-20
So good!
I was curious and hoping for juicy details... and I got more than I paid for! She is so bubbly and adorable and I was only nauseated for like 3 chapters in the middle
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