"A gung-ho travel guide to Heaven, Hell, and beyond. . . . Jennings approaches his subject with a wry, ready-to-be-delighted open-mindedness.¡± ¡ªNew Yorker
"Entertaining." ¡ªUSA Today
"Light and irreverent. . . . long on knowledge and mercifully short on claims about the grand truth of things." ¡ªWashington Post
"Jennings¡¯s breezy approach and exhaustive knowledge allow him to range from Twin Peaks to Dante¡¯s Divine Comedy with ease, and even casual readers who dip in intermittently will be enlightened. Anyone curious about the great beyond should take a look." ¡ªPublishers Weekly (starred review)
"Ken Jennings knows about everything. That now includes the afterlife." ¡ªNPR
¡°Jennings conveys substantial amounts of information in his usual witty style, including lots of facts and zero proselytizing. . . . a lot of fun for trivia buffs and other curious souls.¡± ¡ªBooklist
¡°Everything you always wanted to know about the afterlife but were too alive to ask. . . . An entertaining, amusing collection.¡± ¡ªKirkus Reviews
Chapter Page
Introduction ix
Mythology 1
Adlivun and Qudlivun
Diyu
Duat
The Ghost Road
Hades
Hel
Kur
Mictlan
The Otherworld
Rarohenga
Valhalla
Xibalba
Yomi
Religion 43
Aerial Tollhouses
The Bardo
The Eighteen Hells
Gehenna and Gan Eden
The House of Song
Jahannam
Jannah
Lan Guinee
Limbo
Naraka
Nirvana
The Paradise Earth
The Spiritual World
The Summerland
Three Kingdoms of Glory
Tzror Ha-Hayyim
Vaikuntha
The Village of Ancestors
The Western Paradise
Books 95
Asian's Country
The Bridge
The Cemetery
The Empyrean
The Five Lessons
Half-Life
The Inbetween
Inferno
The Kingdom
King's Cross
Mansoul
The Null
Pandemonium
Paradiso
The Parish
Purgatorio
Riverworld
The Third Sphere
The Time Bubble
The Undying Lands
The Valley of the Shadow of Life
Movies 155
The Bogus Journe...y
Canine Heaven
Denial
The Facility
Fort Morgan
Hotel Hades
Iowa
Judgment City
The Land of the Dead
The Regret
Saturn
The Sheet
Stairway to Heaven
The Stars
Suicideland
Television 191
The Bad Place
The Black Lodge
The Flash-Sideways World
The Great Beyond
Heaven Inc.
Heaven vs. Hell
Lakeview, by Horizen
Larry's Heaven
The 1928 Porter
Oceanside
The Other Side of the World
Paradiddly-daradise
The Reapers
Robot Hell
San Junipero
Sto-Vo-Kor and Gre'thor
Music and Theater 237
The Afterlife
Bar "Heaven"
The Cloudy Draw
Hadestown
The Heaviside Layer
Huis Clos
Rock and Roll Heaven
Up There
Miscellaneous 255
The Banquet
The Djalia
The Eighth Underworld
The Hatlo Inferno
Hellscapes
The Inferno Room
The Land of the Unliving
The Outer Planes
Index 277
Ken Jennings [Àú]
Ken Jennings is the New York Times bestselling author of Brainiac, Maphead, Because I Said So!, and Planet Funny. In 2020, he won the "Greatest of All Time" title on the quiz show Jeopardy! and in 2022, he succeeded Alex Trebek as a host of the show. He is living in Seattle during his mortal sojourn, but his posthumous whereabouts are still to be determined.