The obituaries that appear in The Economist are remarkable because of the unpredictable selection of people to be written about, the surprising lives they lead - but also for the style in which the obituary is written. The selection for this book ranges far and wide, including Jean Bedel Bokassa and Pope Jean Paul II, Pamela Harriman and Harry Oppenheimer, Akio Morita and J. K. Galbraith, Jean Baudrillard and Syd Barrett, Estee Lauder and Hunter Thomson, Bip (the legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau) and even Alex the African Grey (science's best known parrot).