Stating that death is the opposite not of life, but of power, the author argues that death has had a great and largely unexplored impact on the thinking of governance throughout history. He pursues the idea that a deep concern with death is, in fact, the basis of the ideological foundations of all political systems.

Mohammed A. Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Ends of Globalization and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse and the editor of Palestine America.