Over the last year I have had several requests for more information and deeper reads on subjects brought up on the blog. So after banging around my shelves a bit, here is the Death/Scent reading list. Some of them are staples of both olfactive and death literature, others are weird and wonderful deep cuts. This list spans from books on Egyptian perfume practices, to the modern perfume industry, to why some smells repulse us, all the way to people that died during the Great Stink of London from the stench. As new interesting reads come my way I’ll be sure to update. Happy readings!
Books About Fragrance, Olfaction & Fragrance History
- A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer, Elisabeth de Feydeau
- Scents of Time: Perfume from Ancient Egypt to the 21st Century, Edwin T. Morris
- Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, Christopher Kemp
- Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez
- The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell, Luca Turin
- Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell (Studies in Sensory History), Jonathan Reinarz
- Cosmetics & Perfumes in the Roman World, Susie Stewart
- Cult Perfumes: The World’s Most Exclusive Perfumeries, Tessa Williams
- That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, Rachel Herz
- A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
Books About Historical Death, Funeral Customs & Death Rituals
- Rejoice When You Die: The New Orleans Jazz Funerals, Leo Touchet
- Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, Frances Larson
- Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, Paul Koudounaris
- The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain Was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play, James C. Whorton
- Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages, Bonnie Effros
- The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints, and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia, Henri Chambert-Loir
- Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends, Michiko Iwasaka, Barre Toelken
- The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand, Alan Klima
- Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, Donald G. Kyle
- International Handbook of Funeral Customs, Kodo Matsunami
- A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion, Mandy Kirkby, Vanessa Diffenbaugh
- Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, Peter Metcalf
Books About Death Awareness, Dead Bodies & the Death Industry
- The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker
- The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America, Ann Neumann
- The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford
- Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales, William M. Bass, Jon Jefferson
- The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead, Heather Pringle
- Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, Christine Montross
- Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner, Judy Melinek
- Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America, Stephen R. Prothero
- Death and Bereavement Across Cultures, Colin Parkes
- Human Body Decomposition, Jarvis Hayman, Marc Oxenham
- Death and Denial: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Ernest Becker, W.D. Wright
- The Hour of Our Death, Philippe Ariès
- After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, Norman L. Cantor
Death Scent 
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