American Way Of Death

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The American Way of Death Revisited

Author : Jessica Mitford
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307809390
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Way of Death Revisited by : Jessica Mitford

Download or read book The American Way of Death Revisited written by Jessica Mitford and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only the scathing wit and searching intelligence of Jessica Mitford could turn an exposé of the American funeral industry into a book that is at once deadly serious and side-splittingly funny. When first published in 1963, this landmark of investigative journalism became a runaway bestseller and resulted in legislation to protect grieving families from the unscrupulous sales practices of those in "the dismal trade." Just before her death in 1996, Mitford thoroughly revised and updated her classic study. The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations. With its hard-nosed consumer activism and a satiric vision out of Evelyn Waugh's novel The Loved One, The American Way of Death Revisited will not fail to inform, delight, and disturb. "Brilliant--hilarious. . . . A must-read for anyone planning to throw a funeral in their lifetime."--New York Post "Witty and penetrating--it speaks the truth."--The Washington Post

Final Rights

Author : Joshua Slocum
Publisher : Square One Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0942679350
Total Pages : 771 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (426 download)

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Book Synopsis Final Rights by : Joshua Slocum

Download or read book Final Rights written by Joshua Slocum and published by Square One Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josh Slocum and Lisa Carlson are the two most prominent advocates of consumer rights in dealing with the death industry. Here they combine efforts to inform consumers of their rights and propose long-needed reforms. Slocum is executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national nonprofit with over 90 local affiliates nationwide. Carlson is executive director of Funeral Ethics Organization, which works with the industry to try to improve ethical standards. In addition to nationwide issues, the book covers state-by-state information needed by anybody who wishes to take charge of funeral arrangements for a loved one, with or without the help of a funeral director. More information about the book and related issues can be found at www.finalrights.org .

Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830-1920

Author : James J. Farrell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830-1920 by : James J. Farrell

Download or read book Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830-1920 written by James J. Farrell and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study in religion, culture, and social change. Taking the position that death is a cultural event, James J. Farrell examines the historical roots of contemporary American attitudes toward and practices concerning death. Middle-class Victorians tried to assuage their fear by making death appear natural, painless, predictable, beautiful, and ultimately inconspicuous. Scientific naturalism was a crucial catalyst of this transformation. Naturalists redefined death, the medical profession called for the establishment of rural cemeteries, and the sanitary science movement influenced embalming methods and funeral practices. The main part of this work describes and analyzes the convergence of the intellectual and social trends that changed American beliefs and behavior concerning death. The penultimate chapter focuses on Vermilion County, and the development of funeral practices in that specific place. The author uses local sources to add an empirical dimension to the intellectual history that characterizes the rest of the book. -- From publisher's description.

To Serve the Living

Author : Suzanne E. Smith
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674036215
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (362 download)

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Book Synopsis To Serve the Living by : Suzanne E. Smith

Download or read book To Serve the Living written by Suzanne E. Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the “hush harbors” of the slave quarters, African Americans first used funerals to bury their dead and to plan a path to freedom. Similarly, throughout the long struggle for racial equality in the 20th century, funeral directors aided the cause by honoring the dead while supporting the living. Here is their story.

The Right Way of Death: Restoring the American Funeral Business to Its True Calling

Author : Eric Layer
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781735610924
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis The Right Way of Death: Restoring the American Funeral Business to Its True Calling by : Eric Layer

Download or read book The Right Way of Death: Restoring the American Funeral Business to Its True Calling written by Eric Layer and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funeral service is dying. Cremation rates are sky-high, new competitors pop up every day, and an entire generation of funeral home owners are considering closing shop. But a thriving future is still possible. Eric Layer paints a vivid picture of what's threatening death care and everything mortuary owners need to know about how to save it.

The American Way of Birth

Author : Jessica Mitford
Publisher : Plume Books
ISBN 13 : 9780452270688
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (76 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Way of Birth by : Jessica Mitford

Download or read book The American Way of Birth written by Jessica Mitford and published by Plume Books. This book was released on 1993 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of childbirth in America and assesses the conventional and alternative methods of childbirth, commenting on the state of American childbirth and health care. By the author of The American Way of Death. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

This Republic of Suffering

Author : Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0375703837
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (757 download)

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Book Synopsis This Republic of Suffering by : Drew Gilpin Faust

Download or read book This Republic of Suffering written by Drew Gilpin Faust and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Good Death

Author : Ann Neumann
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807076996
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Good Death by : Ann Neumann

Download or read book The Good Death written by Ann Neumann and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann’s father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver—cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying. Neumann struggled to put her life back in order and found herself haunted by a question: Was her father’s death a good death? The way we talk about dying and the way we actually die are two very different things, she discovered, and many of us are shielded from what death actually looks like. To gain a better understanding, Neumann became a hospice volunteer and set out to discover what a good death is today. She attended conferences, academic lectures, and grief sessions in church basements. She went to Montana to talk with the attorney who successfully argued for the legalization of aid in dying, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to listen to “pro-life” groups who believe the removal of feeding tubes from some patients is tantamount to murder. Above all, she listened to the stories of those who were close to death. What Neumann found is that death in contemporary America is much more complicated than we think. Medical technologies and increased life expectancies have changed the very definition of medical death. And although death is our common fate, it is also a divisive issue that we all experience differently. What constitutes a good death is unique to each of us, depending on our age, race, economic status, culture, and beliefs. What’s more, differing concepts of choice, autonomy, and consent make death a contested landscape, governed by social, medical, legal, and religious systems. In these pages, Neumann brings us intimate portraits of the nurses, patients, bishops, bioethicists, and activists who are shaping the way we die. The Good Death presents a fearless examination of how we approach death, and how those of us close to dying loved ones live in death’s wake.

American Afterlives

Author : Shannon Lee Dawdy
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228450
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis American Afterlives by : Shannon Lee Dawdy

Download or read book American Afterlives written by Shannon Lee Dawdy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary life Death in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife. As an anthropologist and archaeologist, Dawdy knows that how a society treats its dead yields powerful clues about its beliefs and values. As someone who has experienced loss herself, she knows there is no way to tell this story without also reexamining her own views about death and dying. In this meditative and gently humorous book, Dawdy embarks on a transformative journey across the United States, talking to funeral directors, death-care entrepreneurs, designers, cemetery owners, death doulas, and ordinary people from all walks of life. What she discovers is that, by reinventing death, Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and connection across generations. She also confronts the seeming contradiction that American death is becoming at the same time more materialistic and more spiritual. Written in conjunction with a documentary film project, American Afterlives features images by cinematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to our rapidly changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.

Decca

Author : Jessica Mitford
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0307565661
Total Pages : 770 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis Decca by : Jessica Mitford

Download or read book Decca written by Jessica Mitford and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Decca” Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy—one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here. Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren. In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, “Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford.”

Remember Me

Author : Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006203068X
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Remember Me by : Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

Download or read book Remember Me written by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Remember Me, Time writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has created a humorous and poignant chronicle of her travels around the country to discover how Americans are reinventing the rites of dying. What she learned is that people no longer want to take death lying down; instead, they're taking their demise into their own hands and planning the afterparty. Cullen hears stories of modern-day funerals: lobster-shaped caskets and other unconventional containers for corpses; cremated remains turned into diamonds; and even mishaps like dove releases gone horribly wrong. Eye-opening, funny, and unforgettable, Remember Me gives an account of the ways in which Americans are designing new occasions to mark death—by celebrating life.

Grave Matters

Author : Mark Harris
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743299280
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Grave Matters by : Mark Harris

Download or read book Grave Matters written by Mark Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-01-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling. Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor. Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin. In the morbidly fascinating tradition of Stiff, Grave Matters details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns. For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.

Death, Grief, and Mourning

Author : John S. Stephenson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439137188
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Death, Grief, and Mourning by : John S. Stephenson

Download or read book Death, Grief, and Mourning written by John S. Stephenson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1985-04-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Americans cope with death? Do our feelings about dying influence the way we live? How are our ideas of death different from those of our ancestors? These questions and others are addressed in this innovative new book -- a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to the processes, practices, and experiences concerning death and dying in the United States. Drawing on sociology and psychology as well as history and literature, John S. Stephenson surveys the range of individual and social responses to death -- from our very conception of its meaning to the complex ethical dilemmas surrounding suicide and euthanasia. Stephenson synthesizes a theoretical perspective of death from the contributions of such important thinkers as Freud, Jung, Ernest Becker, and Robert Jay Lifton. He reviews the evolution of American attitudes and behaviors toward death -- from the Puritan era to the present, and charts the significance of such organizations for the dying as hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes. Bereavement as both personal reaction (grief) and social convention (mourning) is also discussed, as is the denial of death as a coping mechanism for individuals and institutions alike. In his final chapters, Stephenson analyzes the ceremonies of death (including gravestones as social indicators) and provides a psychosocial overview of suicide as a final, desperate attempt to assert control. He concludes by exploring the implications of euthanasia at a time when technology can extend life dramatically but is not always capable of assuring its quality. Throughout, authentic case examples -- many drawn from Stephenson's own clinical work -- illustrate the multi-faceted imagery and experiences that comprise the American way of death. Stephenson's book will be welcomed by sociologists, psychologists, social workers, religious leaders, nurses, and others concerned with caring for the dying and the bereaved. It is a brilliant and elegantly written work that crosses disciplinary boundaries to provide a valuable synthesis of existing knowledge and offer educators and professionals a firm foundation for teaching, practice, and research.

The American Way of Eating

Author : Tracie McMillan
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439171955
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Way of Eating by : Tracie McMillan

Download or read book The American Way of Eating written by Tracie McMillan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist traces her 2009 immersion into the national food system to explore how working-class Americans can afford to eat as they should, describing how she worked as a farm laborer, Wal-Mart grocery clerk, and Applebee's expediter while living within the means of each job.

American Afterlife

Author : Kate Sweeney
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820346896
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis American Afterlife by : Kate Sweeney

Download or read book American Afterlife written by Kate Sweeney and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning writer explores the patchwork American cultural history of grieving the departed. One family inters their matriarch’s ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, “You can make mummies with it!” while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter’s grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected where her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter’s hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes. What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale―that of death in America. It’s a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who are personally involved with death: obit writers in the desert, an Atlantic funeral voyage, a fourth-generation funeral director―even a midwestern museum that shows us our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another, revealing a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that’s by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. “Sweeney’s quest for the “why” behind mourning rituals has given us a book in the best tradition of narrative journalism.”—Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing about Grief and Loss

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

Author : Caitlin Doughty
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393245950
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by : Caitlin Doughty

Download or read book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory written by Caitlin Doughty and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Jesus Way

Author : Eugene H. Peterson
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0802867030
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jesus Way by : Eugene H. Peterson

Download or read book The Jesus Way written by Eugene H. Peterson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-02 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguing that the way Jesus leads and the way we follow are symbiotic, Peterson begins with a study of how the ways of those who came before Christ revealed and prepared the way of the Lord that became complete in Jesus. He then challenges the ways of the contemporary American church, showing in stark relief how what we have chosen to focus on--consumerism, celebrity, charisma, and so forth--obliterates what is unique in the Jesus way.