American Afterlives

Download American Afterlives PDF Online Free

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

DOWNLOAD NOW!


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.

Reinvention

Download Reinvention PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000260267
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinvention by : Anthony Elliott

Download or read book Reinvention written by Anthony Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ours is the era of "reinvention". From psychotherapy to life coaching, from self-help manuals to cosmetic surgery and from corporate rebranding to urban redesign: the art of reinvention is inextricably interwoven with the lure of the next frontier, the breakthrough to the next boundary – especially boundaries of the self. In this new, updated edition of this remarkable book, Anthony Elliott examines "reinvention" as a key buzzword of our times. Through a wide-ranging and impassioned assessment, Elliott unmasks the ever-increasing globalization of reinvention – from reinvention gurus to business reinvention, from personal makeovers to corporate rebrandings. In doing so, he undertakes a serious if often amusing consideration of contemporary reinvention practices, including super-fast weight-loss diets, celebrity makeovers, body augmentations, speed dating, online relationship therapies, organizational restructurings, business downsizings and many more. The second edition of Reinvention includes a new chapter on the digital revolution and artificial intelligence, which situates reinvention within the context of technological automation. There is also a discussion of how the Covid-19 global pandemic has impacted today’s cultures of reinvention. In addition, there is a new concluding chapter in which the author develops further his theoretical account of the nature of reinvention societies. This absorbing book will continue to be the ideal introduction to reinvention for students and general readers alike. Reinvention offers a provocative and radical reflection on an issue (sometimes treated as trivial in the public sphere) that is increasingly politically urgent in terms of its personal, social and environmental consequences.

Reinventing Bach

Download Reinventing Bach PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Union Books
ISBN 13 : 1908526416
Total Pages : 731 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (85 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinventing Bach by : Paul Elie

Download or read book Reinventing Bach written by Paul Elie and published by Union Books. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 731 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.

God Reinvented?

Download God Reinvented? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004665641
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (46 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis God Reinvented? by : Johannes A. van der Ven

Download or read book God Reinvented? written by Johannes A. van der Ven and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere in the western world the process of secularization leads to the decline of faith in God. The concept of secularization itself, however, has come under attack by critics who believe that it does not adequately account for processes which may be part of a certain renascence, as marginal and unrecognized as it may be, of belief in God. Whether these processes are actually taking place, and whether this renascence, if such it is, will bring about a transformation of that belief are questions still waiting to be answered. Are we witnessing the (re)creation of God images, or the (re)discovery of God? The tension between (re)creation and (re)discovery lies at the root of this book and its title, which has been framed very intentionally as a question: God Reinvented?

Reinvented Lives

Download Reinvented Lives PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1446457257
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (464 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinvented Lives by : Charles Handy

Download or read book Reinvented Lives written by Charles Handy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-eight women, ranging from Anita Roddick and Prue Leith to less well-known names, write their own personal stories which are accompanied by Elizabeth Handy's black and white photographs and an introductory essay by Charles Handy. This generation of women is entering the sixties more healthy, more educated and more energetic than most of their mothers. The subjects in this book provide the models for what has become, for the first time, a new age for many women. Released from most of the cares and responsibilities that accompany midlife for women, they are free to reinvent themselves, to give more time to their career or calling, or to luxuriate in the serenity and friendships that few had time for in the past. Some enter new relationships, some start new careers or go back to study, some find that their work is only now reaching its peak. Many have survived traumas and tragedies, but 'the past is just the prologue' as one of them explains.

The Deritualization of Death

Download The Deritualization of Death PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Universal-Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1612334717
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (123 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Deritualization of Death by : Charles Lynn Gibson

Download or read book The Deritualization of Death written by Charles Lynn Gibson and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problematic field of investigation for this study was for the care of bereaved human beings in the context of significant cultural shifts now shaping the twenty-first century. Deritualization was identified as a significant interdisciplinary concern that contributes to potential distress in processes of grieving. The objective of the research was the development of a practical theology of compassionate caregiving for the bereaved with deference to the problem of deritualization. The theoretical framework was guided by the Oxford Interdisciplinary Research model and the Loyola Institute of Ministries model of practical theology. The study was designed for applied research for funeral directors and vocational pastors utilizing qualitative research methods. Hermeneutical and empirical components addressed six research questions through two domains of inquiry: disciplinary perspectives and educational dynamics of bereavement caregiving. Using the method of hermeneutics to critically evaluate the first two research questions, three disciplinary fields of knowledge were examined and integrated from the perspective of pastoral care: funeral service, bereavement psychology, and practical theology. Each discipline individually converged upon meaningful caregiving, meaning-reconstruction, and meaning-reframing as significant modes of bereavement care. Using ethnographic semi-structured interviews to critically evaluate the remaining four research questions, data were collected from a Christian university and a mortuary college. The interview questionnaire included twenty-five main questions organized in four parts: Philosophy of Education, Hermeneutics of Bereaved Families, Care of Bereaved Families, and Encounter of Bereaved Families. The study utilized two cycles of qualitative coding techniques to report the findings of each participating school. A hybrid form of in vivo and holistic coding as well as a second cycle of pattern coding distilled the interview responses into actionable statements that reinforced bereavement caregiving. By synthesizing all of the findings, a compelling case was made for a paradigm of comforting presence supported by principles from a Louwian perspective of practical theology, including theological anthropology, promissiotherapy, bipolarity, and hermeneutics. The study connected a philosophy of meaning-reframing and a paradigm of comforting presence to a meta-theoretical framework within a narrative approach to care. The research elucidated an interdisciplinary understanding that contributed toward a compassionate practical theology of caregiving for the bereaved.

Parting Ways

Download Parting Ways PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520949412
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Parting Ways by : Denise Carson

Download or read book Parting Ways written by Denise Carson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-04-10 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parting Ways explores the emergence of new end-of-life rituals in America that celebrate the dying and reinvent the roles of family and community at the deathbed. Denise Carson contrasts her father’s passing in the 1980s, governed by the structures of institutionalized death, with her mother’s death some two decades later. Carson’s moving account of her mother’s dying at home vividly portrays a ceremonial farewell known as a living wake, showing how it closed the gap between social and biological death while opening the door for family and friends to reminisce with her mother. Carson also investigates a variety of solutions--living funerals, oral ethical wills, and home funerals--that revise the impending death scenario. Integrating the profoundly personal with the objectively historical, Parting Ways calls for an "end of life revolution" to change the way of death in America.

Reinventing Organization Development

Download Reinventing Organization Development PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0787981184
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (879 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinventing Organization Development by : David L. Bradford

Download or read book Reinventing Organization Development written by David L. Bradford and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-09-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for Reinventing Organization Development "A hard hitting yet hopeful look at a field concerned with renewal that is in need of renewal itself. This book is full of intelligent questions, provocative appraisals, and prescriptions for action that they serve." -Rosabeth Moss Kanter, chaired professor, Harvard Business School; author, Confidence: How?Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End "Wise, invaluable advice that the field and its practitioners should heed if the field of OD is to take its rightful place as an applied behavioral science that can make a difference in the economic and human affairs of organizations." -Michael Beer, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School; chairman, Center for Organizational Fitness "Few disciplines in decline have subjected themselves to so profound a self-evaluation. It should lead ?to a rejuvenation of the field. Whether or not it does, there is a great deal to learn here about organizations and relevant professional practice." -Russell Ackoff, professor emeritus, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "Two of the leaders of the field of OD have collaborated to present us with a compelling and controversial state of the art." -Len Schlesinger, vice chairman and chief operating officer, Limited Brands "The book challenges OD consultants to think broadly about their organizational roles and to assert their rightful place in organizations." -Jean M. Bartunek, Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris Chair Professor of Organization Studies, Boston College

Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia

Download Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317068467
Total Pages : 558 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia by : Elisabeth Wesseling

Download or read book Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia written by Elisabeth Wesseling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Romantic-era concepts of childhood nostalgia have been understood as the desire to retrieve the ephemeral mindset of the child, this collection proposes that the emergence of digital media has altered this reflective gesture towards the past. No longer is childhood nostalgia reliant on individual memory. Rather, it is associated through contemporary convergence culture with the commodities of one's youth as they are recycled from one media platform to another. Essays in the volume's first section identify recurrent patterns in the recycling, adaptation, and remediation of children's toys and media, providing context for section two's exploration of childhood nostalgia in memorial practices. In these essays, the contributors suggest that childhood toys and media play a role in the construction of s the imagined communities (Benedict Anderson) that define nations and nationalism. Eschewing the dichotomy between restorative and reflexive nostalgia, the essays in section three address the ethics of nostalgia in terms of child agency and depictions of childhood. In a departure from the notion that childhood nostalgia is the exclusive prerogative of narrative fiction, section four looks for its traces in the child sciences. Pushing against nostalgia's persistent associations with wishful thinking, false memories, and distortion, this collection suggests nostalgia is never categorically good or bad in itself, but owes its benefits or defects to the ways in which it is brought to bear on the representation of children and childhood.

Death and Changing Rituals

Download Death and Changing Rituals PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1782976396
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (829 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Death and Changing Rituals by : J. Rasmus Brandt

Download or read book Death and Changing Rituals written by J. Rasmus Brandt and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration. The contributions presented here are focused not on the examination of different funerary practices, their function and meaning, but on the changes of such rituals _ how and when they occurred and how they may be explained. Based on case studies from a range of geographical regions and from different prehistoric and historical periods, a range of key themes are examined concerning belief and ritual, body and deposition, place, performance and commemoration, exploring a complex web of practices.

Grief, Golf, and Reinvention

Download Grief, Golf, and Reinvention PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 1491774711
Total Pages : 135 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (917 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Grief, Golf, and Reinvention by : Mick Rothman

Download or read book Grief, Golf, and Reinvention written by Mick Rothman and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grief, Golf and Reinvention, is the inspiring story of a retired man who suddenly finds himself widowed, alone and needing to define his new life. It is a story about the long journey from shattered pieces, through acceptance, to renewal, strength, and personal reinvention. It is an absorbing, quirky, and amazing journey from loss to a new normal, with the love of friends & family, a beginners mind, and the regularity and peace to be found in the wonderful game of golf. Mick Rothmans beautifully written book is as therapeutic as it is fascinating. I found it impossible to put down as it drew me into his lifes sudden crossroad. His emotional honesty is truly admirable and his journey extraordinary. Ron Perlman, Ph.D. President, The Center: Resources for Teaching and Learning Well written and very entertaining. An excellent illustration of the importance of meaningful activities and meaningful relationships in a persons life during a time of loss. Kim A. Meyer, Ph.D., BCBA-D Clinical Psychologist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst This book will be helpful to men who find grief and grieving unmanly. On the other hand, as a woman, this is very insightful into how a man processes emotion differently than a woman. A much-needed guide to finding our emotional comfort through the process of grief. Lynne Shupp, EA

Redefining Shamanisms

Download Redefining Shamanisms PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1441159509
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Redefining Shamanisms by : David Gordon Wilson

Download or read book Redefining Shamanisms written by David Gordon Wilson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the Anglo-American Spiritualist movement which provides a new definition of shamanism based on a pattern of apprenticeship unique to traditional shamanisms.

Radical Reinvention

Download Radical Reinvention PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1619020920
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Radical Reinvention by : Kaya Oakes

Download or read book Radical Reinvention written by Kaya Oakes and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-06-08 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As someone who clocked more time in mosh pits and at pro–choice rallies than kneeling in a pew, Kaya Oakes was not necessarily the kind of Catholic girl the Vatican was after. But even while she immersed herself in the punk rock scene and proudly called herself an atheist, something kept pulling her back to the religion of her Irish roots. After running away from the Church for thirty years, Kaya decides to return. Her marriage is under stress, her job is no longer satisfying, and with multiple deaths in her family, a darkness looms large. In spite of her frustration with Catholic conservatism, nothing brings her peace like Mass. After years of searching to no avail for a better religious fit, she realizes that the only way to find harmony—in her faith and her personal life—is to confront the Church she'd left behind. Rebellious and hypercritical, Kaya relearns the catechisms and achieves the sacraments, all while trying to reconcile her liberal beliefs with contemporary Church philosophy. Along the way she meets a group of feisty feminist nuns, a "pray–and–bitch" circle, an all–too handsome Italian priest, and a motley crew of misfits doing their best to find their voices in an outdated institution. This is a story of transformation, not only of Kaya's from ex–Catholic to amateur theologian, but ultimately of the cultural and ethical pushes for change that are rocking the world's largest religion to its core.

The Art of Reinvention

Download The Art of Reinvention PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 1663237050
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (632 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Art of Reinvention by : Bobbe Tatreau

Download or read book The Art of Reinvention written by Bobbe Tatreau and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just when jazz pianist Mikki Richards’ life is the way she wants it—performing internationally with a hugely popular band—its tour bus crashes and her world is turned upside down. Her left hand is seriously injured and, without its leader, the band falls apart. Replacing what she had seems impossible. Facing months of physical therapy while staying with her sister’s family in Colorado, she returns to the world of ordinary, a world that includes her physical therapist, Hank Duncan, a single father who, years ago, was also faced with rebuilding his life. As he quietly pursues her, she is more interested in resurrecting her career, encountering dead end after dead end. As the town is caught in a massive wildfire, Mikki is drawn closer to this new world she has been trying to ignore.

The Business Reinvention of Japan

Download The Business Reinvention of Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503612368
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Business Reinvention of Japan by : Ulrike Schaede

Download or read book The Business Reinvention of Japan written by Ulrike Schaede and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After two decades of reinvention, Japanese companies are re-emerging as major players in the new digital economy. They have responded to the rise of China and new global competition by moving upstream into critical deep-tech inputs and advanced materials and components. This new "aggregate niche strategy" has made Japan the technology anchor for many global supply chains. Although the end products do not carry a "Japan Inside" label, Japan plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives across many critical industries. This book is an in-depth exploration of current Japanese business strategies that make Japan the world's third-largest economy and an economic leader in Asia. To accomplish their reinvention, Japan's largest companies are building new processes of breakthrough innovation. Central to this book is how they are addressing the necessary changes in organizational design, internal management processes, employment, and corporate governance. Because Japan values social stability and economic equality, this reinvention is happening slowly and methodically, and has gone largely unnoticed by Western observers. Yet, Japan's more balanced model of "caring capitalism" is both competitive and transformative, and more socially responsible than the unbridled growth approach of the United States.

Redefining Success

Download Redefining Success PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 0595365671
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (953 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Redefining Success by : Philip C. Groce MD

Download or read book Redefining Success written by Philip C. Groce MD and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow a path cut by a country doctor who examines the lives of men and women who choose to live close to work to pursue a dream, a lifestyle, or even a practical reality. When people make the decision to work close to home, they say good-bye to the hassles of commuting, but along with that, all other aspects of life change. Family and community become enhanced with a strong sense of belonging through compromises that require a redefinition of success. A person finds him or herself frequently in a peer group of one, walking a sharper edge and more susceptible to the bipolarities of life. Anyone contemplating work closer to home will find much of value in this book. See how a community, regardless of location, functions as a community. Enter the intimate lives of these people. Crowd them into mind and hold them in thought and discover the courage to do things never thought possible.

Grave Matters

Download Grave Matters PDF Online Free

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

DOWNLOAD NOW!


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.