ALAN SEGAL'S BOOK ON THE AFTERLIFE is reviewed in the National Catholic Reporter. Excerpt:

Alan F. Segal, professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, claims that even though the afterlife is beyond the purview of science, belief in life after death is older than the existence of Homo sapiens if ancient Neanderthal burial studies can be trusted.

This book is an extensive social history that traces the development and comparative cultural impact of a religious idea.

The author has studied the development of religious belief over 5,000 years of human history. He has mined rich insights about the afterlife from research into many ancient Near Eastern mythologies, rites and rituals. More recently, he has investigated the subject in Islam and compared life-after-death beliefs in the three great Abrahamic faith traditions.