Amy Appleford's Learning to die in London is a fascinating and comprehensive study of the changes occurring within death practice in late medieval and early modern London, and how these practices were understood by laity and clergy alike, with a particular focus upon the ars moriendi texts of the time. The book bridges religious and secular, public and private sources, and is particularly noteworthy in this field for breaking down the normal period divisions between late medieval and early Reformation, examining a span of years that historians have tended to regard as transitional, but that the people living and dying during this time would not have done.

In this work Appleford strives to avoid discussing the macabre and morbidity, in the face of standard notions of the late medieval obsession with death. She engages closely with several texts on death and dying, investigating the models that they present and the performances of death that they mandated, including public performances of grief and remembrance, as well as more internalised, private preparations for and responses to death and dying. These practices, she argues, show the influence of major European works such as Erasmus’ De praeparatione ad mortem or Luther's Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben. She also argues that the Reformation changed the emotions of death, with fear becoming seen as an inappropriate reaction towards death in a theological context where death was to be seen as a triumph.

Cultures of death and dying in medieval and early modern Europe developed from a conference held at the University of Helsinki in March 2013. Five chapters consider Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and one investigates Polish approaches to remembering the dead (pp. 32–48), as well as pre-Christian practices that survived among the common people and the Church's ambiguous responses to them. The volume as a whole leans more toward the late medieval than the early modern, although Eivor Andersen Oftestad's and Håkon Haugland's chapters attempt, like Appleford, to bridge the medieval/early modern divide.

The volume's chief concern is with concepts of the good death and how they changed with the Reformation. It also considers the emotions surrounding death, chiefly grief and the changes in its expression, as displays of emotions came to be seen as excessive and unseemly. Other recurring themes include the survival of pre-Christian practice and the influence that they exerted upon developing Christian practices surrounding death, and the changing relationships between the living and the dead.

Rasmussen and Øygarden Flæten's volume, Preparing for death, remembering the dead, is another volume drawn from a conference, this one at the University of Oslo in May 2012. However, its geographical and theological scope is wider, its seventeen chapters covering the Lutheran Nordic countries, the Calvinism of various lands, and Catholic Rome. Peter Marshall opens the volume with an overview of the subject of death in the Reformation world that would serve as an excellent introduction to all three works considered here, as well as to the subject as a whole. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly introduces an important gender element through her study of the early modern widow. In several instances two or more chapters come together on similar themes, such as Herman Selderhuis and Claudia Resch's chapters on ars moriendi texts in Calvinism and the late medieval period respectively, or Sivert Angel's and Arne Bugge Amundsen's on funeral sermons. Bridget Heal and Eivor Andersen Oftestad both provide invaluable discussions of death and art.

This volume is ill-served by its organisation, however: rather than grouping contributions thematically, it simply begins with plenary papers and then moves to shorter pieces in an apparently random fashion, scattering the volume's focus. It also lacks an index. The result is that some excellent scholarship risks going under-appreciated.

These various works serve to complement each other, teasing out details of related themes, giving a broader picture of the variety of practice within one city or nation. They also show that much work remains to be done to bring together the different aspects of this enduringly important subject.