Escape From Evil

“Escape from Evil was published posthumously. This was controversial, because he wasn’t finished with the book. His wife Marie, who I’ve met, made a difficult decision. She thought it was too important not to put out there. This is actually a darker book. It starts with a quote by Thomas Hardy, the British novelist: “If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst.” You’re reading that and thinking, ‘What do you mean worst? I’m already demoralized!’ After I read this book I quit my job as a professor for a year. I worked in construction, I worked in a kitchen. I felt I really had to think about it. Which was good. Then I realized that eating was good as well, so I went back to being a professor…” Read more...

The best books on Fear of Death

Sheldon Solomon, Psychologist

“Becker was a very interesting anthropologist, working within a tradition of psychoanalysis, who tried to bring together a lot of different disciplines in the sciences and the arts, to create a kind of third culture in order to explain humanity. He thought the point of the human sciences – and indeed all science – was to stop us from being evil, and that evil resulted from our terror of death. We’re aware of our mortality, he argued, and would do anything to escape this prospect of death. Whatever we associate with death – with the challenge to our very existence – we think of as being evil. And if we have an idea of evil personified, it justifies any action.” Read more...

The best books on Immortality

Stephen Cave, Philosopher