BigPicture EMPIRE OF DEATH Subtitled A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses, Paul Koudounaris’ weighty cultural history explores the world’s most strange and significant devotional architecture, including the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo and the tomb of a 1960s wealthy Peruvian nobleman decorated with the exhumed skeletons of his Spanish ancestors. This unprecedented memento mori is illustrated with new footage of sites rarely open to the public and archive images of others swept away in the winds of time. Out now, published by Thames and Hudson.