Book review: farewell to the world: a history of suicide byMarzio Barbagli

In 1897, French sociologist Émile Durkheim presented the formative work, Suicide, which examined suicide through a social framework. In his new book Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide, Marzio Barbagli not only seeks to orientate attention away from the social emphasis of Durkheim’s analysis towards a consideration of the role of the cultural, but he also challenges its Western-centred approach by attempting to present a global history of suicide. While Michael Warren finds this a curious book filled with many striking anecdotes, ultimately the glut of content inhibits it from offering a fully coherent or convincing thesis.