100 PLACES TO SEE AFTER YOU DIE

Everything you always wanted to know about the afterlife but were too alive to ask.

Jennings, famous Jeopardy! champion and author of multiple bestselling books, catalogs 100 conceptions of an afterlife conjured from mythology, world religions, books, movies, TV, music, theater, and beyond. Sources include such landmark depictions of heaven and hell as those in Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost as well as in lesser-known texts. Amusingly, Jennings presents his compilation as a sort of guidebook for tourists. There are sidebars on "Where To Stay" (in Dante's Inferno, that's the First Circle, "but it's crowded and books up fast”), "Getting Around" (in Hades, via Charon, the ferryman of the dead), and "Eating and Drinking.” In ancient Egypt, "In-Room Dining" for the pharaohs includes a personal supply of mummified eats. Popular-culture portrayals of the afterlife include usual suspects like It's a Wonderful Life and The Twilight Zone but also more obscure fare such as “Heaven,” the Talking Heads song about “a place where nothing ever happens.” For many cultures, death leads to a literal kind of travel to the afterlife, a journey, often across water. Certain figures recur in these otherworldly voyages, including all manner of ghosts and "psychopomps," or “immortal guides.” In the origins of Haitian Voodoo, death is a journey back in time to the “Mother Continent” of the enslaved population. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, one must "clear customs," a series of floating stations, on the way to heaven. Jennings also explores Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, Marvel and DC Comics, Disneyland rides, Twin Peaks, the network comedy The Good Place, video games, and Dungeons and Dragons. The most resonant "No-Frills Accommodations" may be found in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, where "each room has a door, but it usually won't open," and "Hell is—other people."

An entertaining, amusing collection of a wide variety of visions of the afterlife.