| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 216 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
American ways of death -- Gone, but not forgotten -- Dismal trade: Sarah Peacock, memorial tattoo artist: under the skin -- The cemetery's cemetery -- Dismal trade: Kay Powell, obituary writer: the doyenne speaks -- The last great obit writers' conference -- Give me that old-time green burial -- Dismal trade: Oana Hogrefe, memorial photographer memory maker -- The house where death lives -- Dismal trade: Lenette Hall, owner, The urngarden: The business at the back of the closet -- With the fishes -- Dismal trade: Anne Gordon, funeral chaplain: funerals are fun -- Death by the roadside |
| Summary |
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 find themselves personally involved with death: a klatch of obit writers in the desert, a funeral voyage on the Atlantic, a fourth-generation funeral director--even a midwestern museum that takes us back in time to meet our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another until something larger is revealed: a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-216) |
| Notes |
English |
|
Print version record |
| Subject |
Funeral rites and ceremonies -- United States
|
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Mourning customs -- United States
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Undertakers and undertaking -- United States
|
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Death & Dying.
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Funeral rites and ceremonies
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Manners and customs
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Mourning customs
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Undertakers and undertaking
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| SUBJECT |
United States -- Social life and customs. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140527
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| Subject |
United States
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780820346892 |
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0820346896 |
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