Death has popularly had the reputation of being the last of life's great mysteries, a subject of speculation, and as a foreboding event both inevitable, and feared. In Life Sentences, Zohreh Bayatrizi examines the many concerted attempts from the last 350 years to strip death of its mystery, and to order, manage, and transform it from an individualized and fatalistic event to a social phenomenon that allows intervention. She examines the process that has caused death to be understood in five quasi-biblical commandments: "thou shalt not die violently; thou shalt not die...