Death Becomes Them

If you have a thing for famous suicide cases, like those of Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain, and Sigmund Freud (the father of psychoanalysis committed suicide; go figure), this book, from Harper Paperbacks, is for you. Strauss is a cheerfully morbid sort who divulges the gory details of each case, from the planning to the suicide note (if any) to the method of self-destruction. It’s dark stuff, obviously, but she succeeds in giving us a glimpse of the human beings at the core of these legends.