Since the end of the last Ice Age, ten thousand or so years ago, over the period which we know as 'History', about one hundred billion people have died. Seventy million people died last year, six hundred thousand of them in the U.K. Death is on the one hand an ordinary, inevitable, everyday, predictable, mundane event. It has to be budgeted for, decisions made, and relations between the living reorganized. Half of the essays deal with this aspect of death. On the other hand, humans have always sought to transcend the mundaneness of death in burial rituals and memorials. The later essays...

What has been lost, what has been gained, in replacing sexual orthodoxy with the 'heresies' of postmodern sexualities? In the recent past-even within living memory-sex has usually been a matter of monogamous heterosexual marriage and the procreation of children. Other sexual practices were seen as deviations from the 'patriarchal' norm. Today things are different, and western liberal societies promote and celebrate a growing multiplicity of sexual, familial and procreational practices and relationships. Nine writers assess the directions in which our societies are being led.