Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: After paradise -- The voice in the whirlwind : The book of Job and The book of Psalms -- Waiting for the Messiah : Paul's Epistles -- Cicero's tears : letters on the death of his daughter -- Facing the barbarians : Marcus Aurelius's Meditations -- The consolations of philosophy : Boethius and Dante -- The painting of time : El Greco's The burial of the Count of Orgaz -- The body's wisdom : Michel de Montaigne's last essays -- The unsent letter : David Hume's my own life -- The consolations of history : Condorcet's a sketch for a historical picture of the progress of the human mind -- The heart of heartless conditions : Karl Marx and The communist manifesto -- War and consolation : Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address -- Songs on the death of children : Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder -- The calling : Max Weber and the Protestant ethic -- The consolations of witness : Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi, and Miklós Radnóti -- To live outside grace : Albert Camus's The plague -- Living in truth : Václav Havel's Letters to Olga -- The good death : Cicely Saunders and the hospice.