Based on a pioneering eight-year study, this is a fascinating and ultimately reassuring look at the belief systems that surround death and dying in cultures around the world -- revealing the startling similarities found in traditional descriptions of the journey we embark on after death.The first cross-cultural investigation of how humanity copes with the reality of death, this comforting guide supplies an important new understanding of the after-death in much the same way the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross does for the dying process.