Whistling past the graveyard

Books Special Report | With boomers graying and starting to ponder the end of their lives, here's an opportunity for publishers to get ahead of the curve and produce meaningful, challenging books. A look at what's already published shows death books that largely seek to wine and dine the dying or those left behind. But should Christian publishers dodge death? Someone needs to answer the question, How then shall we die? | Marvin Olasky

Baby boomers are moving from applauding the Grateful Dead to worrying about a graceless death, and their interests continue to push publishers. When the boomers were teething, Dr. Spock's guidebook seemed omnipresent. When some of them participated in late-1960s college protests, Charles Reich's The Greening of America topped the bestseller list with predictions of how this best of all generations would change the United States. When one of them exhibited, with Monica Lewinsky, the generation's notorious self-centeredness, anti-Clinton books sold big.

Now, as boomers turn the corner toward old age, books about views on death will emerge by the truckload. The soft rain already has begun, judging by the bestselling success of Tuesdays with Morrie, and by 25 other books on death and dying published within the last six years and sent me by publishers in response to my queries. But much of American culture still is "exhibiting a touch of, um, denial," as Newsweek noted about recent films that have had "death scenes airbrushed out of movies."