Are They Dead Yet? - by Sam Roberts (Hardcover)

About the Book

From New York Times obituarist Sam Roberts comes a behind-the-byline look at the obit: Who we remember, how we forget, and where we find the true meaning in a life.

Book Synopsis

From celebrated New York Times obituarist Sam Roberts, the art of the obit: Who we remember, how we forget, and where we find the true meaning in a life.

After nearly a decade behind the obituaries desk at the paper of record, Roberts knows obits aren't really about deaths. In fact, they usually only mention dying once. Over the course of the nearly 1,500 obituaries he has written throughout his career, he has instead come to understand that they're about distilling an entire life lived-for someone whose name he may have learned that morning.

In Are They Dead Yet?, Roberts explores the major questions that arise from the task of producing a succinct yet record-defining account of a life. Who deserves an obituary, and how do we decide who gets one? How does an obituarist choose what to include-and to omit? What happens when embarrassing information, like a crime, affair, or wonky cause of death, makes itself known? What makes a legacy, a claim to fame? And what happens when that claim to fame, so important in death, isn't what mattered in life at all?

With wit, wisdom, and behind-the-scenes intrigue, Roberts examines the practice of writing advance obituaries, of which there are more than 2,000 on hold and regularly updated at the New York Times, America's relationship to death in the wake of 9/11 and the pandemic, classic euphemistic language, and more. Through it all, Roberts brings his humor, shrewdness, and experience to prove what he has learned from a long career in death: There's no such thing as an ordinary life.

Review Quotes

"An ingenious social history . . . [Roberts] is an ace at compact biography . . . An industrious researcher, mining fascinating nuggets-some profound, some just fun-from sources familiar and obscure." --The Wall Street Journal on THE NEW YORKERS

"[Roberts is] a scholar who's read everything ever published on the city's past and of a reporter who's spent his career engaging its people . . . [The New Yorkers] abounds in rich portraits." --New York Times Book Review on THE NEW YORKERS

"My favorite kind of municipal portrait, a gathering of profiles, not of the famous but the merely pivotal." --Chicago Tribune on THE NEW YORKERS

"A detailed look at mostly unknown folks who contributed to the city . . . Ordinary people involved in extraordinary things." --New York Daily News on THE NEW YORKERS

About the Author

Sam Roberts, a 50-year veteran of New York journalism, is an obituaries reporter and formerly the Urban Affairs correspondent at the New York Times. He has hosted the New York Times "Close Up" on TV and the podcasts "Only in New York," anthologized in a book of the same name, and "The Caucus." He is the author of The New Yorkers, A History of New York in 27 Buildings, A History of New York in 101 Objects, and Grand Central, among other books. He has written for the NYT Magazine, the New Republic, New York, Vanity Fair, Foreign Affairs, and Air Mail. A history adviser to Federal Hall, he lives in New York with his wife.