<b>A <i>TIMES </i>AND <i>OBSERVER </i>HIGHLIGHT FOR 2022</b><b>''An empowering story of human ingenuity'' <i>Economist</i></b><b>''Full of curious facts'' <i>The Times</i></b><b>''</b><b>Gripping and fascinating'' <i>Mail on Sunday</i></b><b>''The obvious beauty of <i>This Mortal Coil</i> is that in being a history of death, it is also a history of life, and a brilliant, fascinating one at that'' <i>Scotsman</i></b>___________Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely to strike anyone at any age, and where famine could be just one bad harvest away, to one where in many countries excess food is more of a problem than a lack of it. Why have the reasons we die changed so much? How is it that a century ago people died mainly from infectious disease, while today the leading causes of death in industrialised nations are heart disease and stroke? And what do changing causes of death rev