To die, kick the bucket, to meet your Maker, dead as a doornail, get whacked, smoked, bite the dust, sleep with the fishes, go six feet under--whatever death is called, it's going to happen. In 1789 Ben Franklin wrote, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Death remains a certainty. But how do we die? It's the enormous variety of how that enlivens final exits.

According to death certificates, in 1700 there were less than 100 causes of death. Today there are 3,000. With each advance of technology, people find new ways to become deceased, often causing trends that...

No matter what your station in society, everybody has to go sometime. Even the wealthy, powerful, and world-renowned must ultimately meet their Maker--though some have departed this life more ignobly than they might have wished.

• From Mozart to rock and roll, which performers ended their lives on the wrong note?
• What famous U.S. bridge is named after an explorer who was eaten by cannibals?
• Everyone wants to hit the lottery, but does Lady Luck visit winners with deadly fangs?
• Plus: Learn the real fate of Gilligan's Island...

What is the price of brilliance?

Why are so many creative geniuses also ruinously self-destructive? From Caravaggio to Jackson Pollack, from Arthur Rimbaud to Jack Kerouac, from Charlie Parker to Janis Joplin, to Kurt Cobain, and on and on, authors and artists throughout history have binged, pill-popped, injected, or poisoned themselves for their art. Fully illustrated and addictively readable, Genius and Heroin is the indispensable reference to the untidy lives of our greatest artists and thinkers, entertainingly chronicling how the notoriously creative lived and...